Shapiro: GOP e-mail an offense to Jewish voters

One of Barack Obama’s chief local surrogates to the Jewish community said Saturday that he was confident Republican attempts to scare Jewish voters away from Obama would not succeeed.

State Rep. Josh Shapiro (D-Abington), on a campaign conference call responding to revelations that the state Republican Party was behind a false and explosive e-mail to Jewish voters, said such tactics were an offense to the Jewish community. He and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) both called on John McCain to condemn the e-mail, which equated a vote for Obama with the “tragic mistake” of ignoring “the warning signs in the 1930’s and 1940’s” that preceded the Holocaust.

“The words contained in that e-mail were absolutely abominable, and deserve to be condemned, not only by the Republican Party but by John McCain,” Shapiro said. “It offends every single memory of [those] who perished in the Holocaust and those that survived the Holocaust.”

Mocking the party’s assertion that the e-mail “went a little bit farther than the facts support,” Shapiro added: “They didn’t go a little bit farther, they went far over the line.” He said he had yet to see the corrective e-mail the party said it would send.

Though winning over Jewish voters has been a challenge for Obama, recent polling data has shown his support in that demographic increasing considerably.

“I’m confident that in the exit polls at the end of the day,” Shapiro said, “that Obama’s support in the Jewish community will be at least as high as Sen. [John] Kerry’s was.”

DAN HIRSCHHORN is a PolitickerPA.com Reporter and can be reached via email at danh@politickerpa.com.
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