Dr. Mark Ulitsky, left, a 54-year-old physician from Philadelphia, was visiting Brighton Beach with Mikhail, a childhood friend from Moscow. Ulitsky says he’ll vote for McCain because “I want a strong supporter of Israel as president and I trust McCain, not Obama, in that regard.”
by Walter Ruby Special To The Jewish Week
As Election Day nears, there is fear and loathing on the Brighton Beach boardwalk.
Fear that neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has the answers to the nation’s economic collapse.
And a certain loathing for Obama, whose background has some Russian-speaking Jews commenting with stark racial overtones about his candidacy and a possible Obama presidency.
While Russians seem poised to deliver the majority of their votes to Sen. McCain in the upcoming presidential election, according to new polling data, their enthusiasm for the Republican candidate seems decidedly tempered compared to four years ago when George W. Bush garnered 77 percent of the Russian vote.
“I usually support Republicans,” said Isaac, a 38-year-old tool and dye maker from Sheepshead Bay, who like a number of those
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interviewed on a recent weekend asked for anonymity. “But I am really shell-shocked by this economic meltdown and blame the Bush administration for allowing Wall Street to create a culture of excess that led to the collapse.
“The value of my 401(k) plan has dropped 50 percent in a few weeks, and there are layoffs coming at our company — layoffs that could well include me. I have a house and three kids, so I’m pretty scared.”
Isaac, who said he initially backed McCain but is now undecided, said he has “zero confidence” in the ability of either McCain or Obama to turn around the economic situation. And he shares his community’s fear that the economic crisis puts at risk many of the hard-won economic and social gains Russians have made since arriving here from the former Soviet Union.
Isaac’s comments, and the fact that he is still undecided just three weeks before the Nov. 4 election, are reflected in a new poll of Russian Americans released last week.
The poll, carried out by the New York-based Research Institute for New Americans (RINA), found that 56 percent of the 479 Russian speakers surveyed nationwide favored McCain, while only 10 percent supported Obama. More than a quarter of Russian speakers — 28 percent — remain undecided. (The poll was taken between Aug. 15 and Oct. 10; half of the respondents were from Greater New York, with the rest from California, Florida, Georgia and Massachusetts. Eighty-five percent of respondents in the survey identified themselves as Jewish or partly Jewish.)
Sam Kliger, founder and chairman of RINA and director of Russian Jewish Community Affairs at the American Jewish Committee, said that respondents interviewed late in the process were noticeably less supportive of McCain than those who answered earlier, likely because of the deteriorating economic situation. He noted that support for McCain was somewhat higher in New York than in the rest of the nation. (In New York 65 percent were for McCain, 10 percent for Obama and 19 percent undecided).
Voters under 35 were almost twice as likely to vote for Obama as the overall population (44 percent for McCain, 18 percent for Obama and 38 percent undecided).
According to Kliger’s survey, 62 percent of respondents mentioned the war on terrorism as the issue most important to them, closely followed by the defense of Israel (60 percent). Only 45 percent identified “the economy” as the most important issue. Russian speakers are known to be passionate supporters of Israel, generally more hawkish than Jewish Americans in general on the issue of Israel, and more socially conservative than most Jews.
Kliger was struck by the decided lack of enthusiasm for McCain that his poll revealed.
“When I began this survey, I expected that McCain would end up with a percentage of the Russian-speaking vote similar to that of Bush in 2004,” he says. “But given the drop-off in support for McCain I have been witnessing in the last three weeks, I think it more likely that he may only end up with upwards of 60 percent of the Russian-speaking vote.
“Still,” Kliger continued, “the Russian-speaking electorate feels a great cultural distance from Obama that makes it difficult for many to support him, even in the bad economic times.”
That distance, and distaste, for Obama was almost palpable in Brighton Beach.
Mikhail and Evgenia, a couple in their late 70s who emigrated here from Kiev in the early 1990s said they are registered Democrats, but leaning toward McCain. “He is almost as old as we are but his mind still seems to be working well,” said Evgenia. “Still, I am very disappointed McCain chose [Gov. Sarah] Palin [as his vice-presidential pick], who seems to me utterly inexperienced and unknowledgeable. We are very unhappy that food prices have gone up so much in recent months, so that we are spending almost every cent of our monthly SSI check on rent and food costs.”
Yet according to Mikhail, he and his wife will likely vote for McCain because, “We find Obama totally unacceptable as president. If only the Democrats had nominated Hillary Clinton, we would have supported her.”
Asked why Obama is unacceptable, Mikhail said, “In my mind, the president of such a great country ought to be a real American, by which I mean a white person.”
Marina, a 40-year-old community worker living in Midwood, was one of a number of people who expressed the fear that an Obama victory might cause blacks in nearby neighborhoods to indulge in a triumphalist attitude that would lead to increased crime against the Russian-speaking community.
“I am certainly not a racist, but the truth is that there is a lot of crime by blacks against Russians. Older people who were here at the beginning of the 1990s tell me that crime soared in south Brooklyn when [David] Dinkins was mayor and we are afraid it could be even worse if Obama becomes president.”
Ari Kagan, a community activist and commentator in the Russian-language media, agreed that there is a certain antipathy toward Obama in the Russian-speaking community.
“No one in the community says, ‘Don’t vote for Obama because he is black,’” Kagan said. “Yet there is a widespread fear in our community that if Obama is elected, crime will go up. I don’t know even one Russian Jew in Coney Island [where elderly Russian Jews live among the predominantly black population] who said they are voting for Obama.”
Kagan, who was narrowly defeated by Alec Brook-Krasny in the 2006 Democratic primary for the State Assembly, said, “I myself am a strong Democrat, but I am leaning to McCain this time. I am bothered by the fact that Obama sat in Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright’s church for 20 years and never said anything against Wright’s sermons. I am also bothered by Obama’s flip-flop on a united Jerusalem and by a recent story that two brothers in Gaza donated $33,000 to Obama. The Obama campaign returned the money after the story broke, but my question is, ‘Why would these brothers have contributed money to Obama at all if they don’t believe he would support the Palestinians against Israel?”
Rabbi Moshe Soloway, 36, a community activist, is surely in the minority in the Russian community. He operates the Russian-Americans for Obama Facebook Group, and he said that when he recently advocated support for Obama on a talk show on Russian-language Davidzon Radio, he was “shocked by the sheer virulence of the people who called in and castigated me.
“They said things like, ‘You hate Israel’ and ‘What you are doing will bring Muslim domination of America.’”
Rabbi Soloway added, “Russians keep repeating that Obama is really a secret Muslim. I also think there is a strong element of racism involved. Young Russians are even more open than older ones in telling me they oppose him because he is black.”
The rabbi said that Obama’s extreme unpopularity in south Brooklyn, fanned by a Russian-language media that has been overwhelmingly supportive of McCain, has prevented Russian-speaking Democratic leaders from backing him publicly. “I recently approached Alec Brook-Krasny and asked what he is doing on behalf of Obama. Alec turned away, looking pained and embarrassed.”
For his part, Brook-Krasny, who is running for re-election in the 46th Assembly District, confirmed that he will not publicly endorse Obama. But he left the impression he personally favors the Democratic presidential candidate.
“I don’t think it is my job to endorse one candidate or the other, but rather to educate voters on the issues,” Brook-Krasny said. “That is needed since there is not a balance in the Russian media. Many reporters are advocating for McCain.”
Brook-Krasny believes Obama is hurt in the Russian community because “many Russian-speakers view African-American candidates based on negative stereotypes, and because many people believe McCain will be a better friend of Israel than Obama.”
Still, Brook-Krasny said, “I do think there has been a shift away from McCain recently because of the economy. Also, the younger Russian-speaking voters are, the more likely they are to vote for Obama.”
Back on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, Vitaly, a 36-year-old information technology manager, was out walking his new-born daughter in a carriage. He said he is “reluctantly” supporting McCain as “the lesser of two evils.”
“I fear McCain is too old and unsure what to do about the economic crisis, but I believe Obama is a socialist — something I deduce from the people he hangs out with like [former Weather Underground leader William] Ayres. “I have seen my net worth plummet in recent weeks. As I look at the choice we have in this election, I have to say that the future of this country doesn’t look too promising right now.”
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