Will there ever be a Jewish president?  The question for most of American history has been answered with an emphatic no.  There continues to be too much anti-Semitism in America.  A Jewish president would be accused of “dual loyalty” if there was a dispute between the United States and Israel.  A Jewish candidate would never draw enough popular or electoral votes to win.

All of the above comments have been turned on their heads in the presidential campaign of 2016.  Bernie Sanders, an avowed Democratic Socialist, a Vermont senator and a Brooklyn-born Jew with an accent to match, is giving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a real challenge for the Democratic nomination, virtually tying her in the Iowa caucuses.

When he first entered the contest, Sanders was given little chance to win by media commentators and columnists and political analysts. 

ADVERTISEMENT

If the surprising early popularity and electoral successes of Bernie Sanders were not enough to revise conventional thinking about the viability of Jewish presidential candidates, we now have the unprecedented possibility of two Jewish candidates at the same time.  Former three-term New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has told supporters that if Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination and if Sanders beats Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he might enter the race as an independent or third party-ticket candidate.

There are, to be sure, some precedents for Jewish presidential or vice-presidential candidates, or candidates with Jewish ancestry. 

In 1964, Barry Goldwater  was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate. Goldwater’s grandfather, Michael “Big Mike” Goldwasser (later Goldwater), was a European Jewish immigrant. The family ran a department store in Phoenix. Goldwater did not hide his Jewish ancestry and even spoke of his immigrant roots in the course of the campaign. (There is no indication that Goldwater’s huge loss in the election against incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson was in any way related to his Jewish grandparent.)

The first Jewish candidate to make a serious run for the nomination of one of the two major parties was the late former Pennsylvania Gov. Milton J. Schapp, a Democrat who had become a billionaire as a pioneer in the cable TV business.  In 1972, Schapp sought the Democratic presidential nomination.  His campaign never gained traction, and several corruption scandals essentially knocked him out of the race.  He garnered only two delegates at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

In 2000, Vice President Al Gore, who was running to succeed Bill Clinton as president, made history by selecting Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a Shabbat-observing Modern Orthodox Jew, as his running mate. Not only did Gore’s selection not cost him any political capital, his approval numbers in polls just after he selected Lieberman moved sharply upward.  Lieberman thus became the only Jew so far to receive the official nomination of his party for vice president.

Of note is the fact that when Sen. John McCain was considering possible running mates when he received the 2008 GOP  nomination, his initial choice was none other than Lieberman, who was then serving in the Senate as an independent. Instead, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — and the rest, as they say, is history.

This year could go down in history as the year two viable Jewish prospects for the nation’s highest office — one a Democratic Socialist from Brooklyn, and the other a former Republican, former Democrat and most recently independent billionaire — proved that being Jewish is no longer a handicap in presidential elections.