In Philadelphia’s suburbs, an army of canvassers targets Jewish voters

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Jewish canvassers in Pennsylvania target swing voters, knowing their efforts could decide the election.

By Ron Kampeas, JTA

The second time this month Benny Stanislawski made the three-hour trip from the Jewish precincts of suburban Washington to the Jewish precincts of suburban Philadelphia, he ditched his car and borrowed his mother’s minivan.

He needed the space provided by the 2019 Honda Odyssey, plastered with stickers from the alma maters of the five Stansilawski progeny, because this time, he was bringing along another five 20-something Jewish staffers for Democrats in Congress.

On Sunday, he and his fellow travelers were among about 100 Jewish canvassers for Vice President Kamala Harris from as far afield as Chicago, New York and Washington D.C. who spread out across suburbs like this one, where “I stand with Israel” signs populate expansive lawns.

“The path to the presidency runs through Pennsylvania,” Eva Wyner, the Harris campaign’s director of Jewish outreach, told the canvassers. “It runs through right here in Montgomery County. In 2020 Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by less than five votes per precinct. Five votes per precinct!” The state’s Jewish population is estimated at 400,000.

Harris’ campaign sees Jewish voters in seven swing states as critical targets, and on the same day a couple of Democratic stars, New York Rep. Ritchie Torres and Doug Emhoff, the Jewish second gentleman, arrived in the Detroit area to make similar cases to Michigan’s Jews. The Harris campaign has scheduled another Pennsylvania Jewish outing in Pittsburgh on Nov. 3, two days before the election.

“Pennsylvania is home to 45% of Jewish voters in battleground states,” Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told the canvassers. “We are here for a reason, and we are here to ensure not only that Jewish voters turn out, but that they turn out for Kamala Harris.”

The Democratic canvassers weren’t alone. The same day they ventured up this suburb’s famously long driveways, more than 50 Jewish Republican Jewish Coalition volunteers canvassed for Donald Trump, as they have done for months. (The RJC did not reply in time to a request for information about Sunday’s canvassing.) Their message is that the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas has faltered while Trump’s has remained steadfast.

Pennsylvania’s Jews and the perceived anxieties among them have drawn widespread attention as it becomes increasingly clear that the election could easily turn on a few dozen districts, including heavily Jewish suburbs of Philadelphia.

On Sunday, CNN’s Dana Bash was holding court in a popular local deli, Hymie’s, where the RJC chose to film its closing ad.

Montgomery County is home to several prominent Jews in politics — on both sides of the aisle. Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, was raised in the area and represented it before being elected to statewide office (and being considered as Harris’ running mate before she pickled Tim Walz). Mort Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America, lives in Bala Cynwyd; he is an effusive backer of Trump. Two major Jewish donors to Republicans, Jeffrey Yass and Arthur Dantchik, both live minutes away and have had their homes protested over their support for right-wing groups in Israel.

The suburbs of course are not entirely Jewish, but the campaigns were banking on ethnic affinity. The Democratic canvassers, who began the day munching on bagels and chocolate-chip cupcakes in a sukkah outside a local college building that doubles as a synagogue, were steeped in the Jewish Democratic arguments for Harris and against Trump.

They chatted with each other, trying out pitches peppered with smatterings of Hebrew and references to the Jewish high holiday season.

Stanislawski, a communications director for a prominent Democrat, had a pep talk ready for his crew. (He asked that his boss not be identified, and the other congressional staffers asked not to be identified, because their canvassing was separate from their work in Congress.)

Last week, Stanislawski said, he encountered an Israeli-American couple who had just moved back to the United States. They were reluctant to vote for Trump but their anxieties about Harris, for them an unknown quantity, gnawed at them.

The wife was coming over to Harris, but the husband was a harder nut to crack, Stanslawski said.

“Then I told him that Trump said Hezbollah was ‘very smart,’” Stanislawski recalled, and that clinched it. “By the time I left, they had a Kamala sign above their door.”

Trump praised Hezbollah’s smarts days after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, although he framed it as a critique of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not being prepared for the onslaught. Hezbollah joined the conflict the day after Hamas launched the war. Israel is currently battling the terror group in Lebanon.

The exchange was emblematic of the mission for Jewish canvassers who are deeply involved in the political process, relaying inside knowledge favoring their candidates to sway voters, Jewish or not, who have not paid attention to every incremental political development.

“This election will be won or lost in the field, and we need your help to contact every voter in Pennsylvania,” Wyner said in her own pep talk just before the canvassers set out. “The most powerful way to mobilize voters is to hear from supporters in their communities, people like you.”

Canvassers were armed with Jewish stories and arguments for when they did encounter still-undecided Jewish voters.

Suzan Lopatin, a retired Jewish educator from neighboring Bucks County, said she was worried that Harris’ condensed campaign, launched in July after President Joe Biden removed himself from contention, meant that her pro-Israel messaging was not getting through to voters.

“Harris was largely unknown and unable to broadcast her opinions as far and wide as Trump has,” she said.

Lopatin, 64, said she would deploy her wealth of knowledge about the Holocaust — she taught it, and has hundreds of books at home about the period — to make her case. She was armed with quotes from Trump threatening violence against protesters, his equivocations about the deadly neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and his failure to curb the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot spurred by his false claims that he won the election.

Lopatin said she planned to show off her tattoo — ”Never Again, ” on her arm — while knocking on doors. “I think ‘Never Again’ is salient,” she said. “He would destroy people.”

Democrats see anxiety about Trump as a key driver to push waverers off the fence. “Turn your anxiety into action,” said an email sent Monday to activists by Jewish Women for Kamala.

It may be a resonant pitch. “I’m going to vote for Kamala but more than that, I’m going to vote against Donald,” Richard Weschler told Stanislawski and his friends when he met them walking through this suburb. Aware that a reporter was present, he hesitated at first to give his name: “I don’t want bomb threats.”

Melanie Nathan, a cofounder of the private Facebook page Jewish Women for Kamala Harris (distinct from Jewish Women for Kamala), said she and her fellow administrators often field questions from women who are adamant they will not vote for Trump but were anxious about Harris. She and her co-founder Carol Goldman say the page has 31,000 members and is in the process of vetting another 10,000. Goldman said that some direct messages have led to long phone calls.

Nathan, who directs an NGO that seeks to settle LGBTQ asylum seekers from Africa, said she pitches a more holistic view: Whatever one candidate or the other said yesterday, Harris over time has been a steady advocate for Jews while Trump is erratic. She noted that he snubbed Netanyahu for years because the Israeli prime minister had congratulated Biden after the 2020 election.

“I don’t doubt there will come a time when he will again say ‘F— Bibi,” said Nathan, 68.

The Jewish campaigns tend to focus heavily on the negatives of the rival candidate.

The RJC’s closing ad features a staged conversation among three women about Harris’ alleged associations with radicals, which includes an anguished “Oy vey!”

“Trump I never cared for, but at least he’ll keep us safe!” says one.

Likewise, the JDCA’s closing ad is heavy on sinister shots of Trump. “Donald Trump is openly scapegoating Jews,” it says, referring to Trump’s warning last month that Jews will be blamed if he is defeated.

RJC has spent $15 million on its campaigning, while the JDCA has paid $2 million.

This weekend, Stanislawski and his friends did not score many invitations inside. A lot of folks had already cast ballots for Harris in early voting. Referring to Trump’s 2016 election, one man called out of his window, “Not going to let that happen again!”

The canvassers had to contend with a game between the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants (the Eagles wiped the floor with the Giants, 28-3). “We’re all good, thank you,” said one man at a door with a mezuzah, minutes before kickoff; a tiny girl in an Eagles sweatshirt peered out from behind his leg.

Some of the residents seemed more interested in the canvassers than their message. A congressional staffer said several people were eager to explain to her that their voting-age sons were away at medical school.

There were occasional Trump signs on lawns — not many, but more than in 2020, at least according to locals. “Pro-Israel, pro-Trump,” one sign said.

As the canvassers set out, Rep. Brad Schneider, an Illinois Jewish Democrat, used a seasonal Jewish metaphor to urge them on.

“We shake that lulav, north, south, east and west, because we need to be everywhere, getting out the message, because literally, the future of the world depends on it,” he said.