WASHINGTON (JTA) — Republicans in Alaska, Washington state, Connecticut, North Carolina and California have run ads showing Jewish Democrats handling cash. In Pennsylvania, a candidate married to a Jewish man is depicted similarly.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Washington state Republican Party sent voters fliers depicting congressional candidate Kim Schrier with a wad of cash in her hand.
In Alaska, Republican Women of Juneau ran an ad targeting State Sen. Jesse Kiehl showing a man sticking a wad of cash into his inner jacket pocket.
In North Carolina, the state Republican Party ran an online ad denouncing what it called the radical agenda of Democrats. It featured Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, clutching a wad of cash. Neither Hillary Clinton, the party’s 2016 presidential nominee, nor Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are shown with cash.
The Juneau Republican group did not return calls from the Post seeking comment. The Washington and North Carolina state parties denied anti-Semitic intent, but did not say whether they had run similar ads against non-Jewish candidates.
In Pennsylvania, State Rep. Todd Stephens ran a TV ad featuring challenger Sara Johnson Rothman clutching a wad of cash. Rothman’s husband is Jewish. The illustration dropped her maiden name, Johnson, although she routinely uses it.
Additionally, a Stephens mailer depicts a woman receiving a wad of cash from a donor. Johnson Rothman serves on the Upper Dublin school board in suburban Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Stephens as denying anti-Semitic intent. The newspaper quoted a spokeswoman for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia saying that she did not perceive anti-Semitism, but also quoted the president of the city’s Board of Rabbis as saying the ad was “disturbing” and, inadvertently or not, used anti-Semitic tropes.
Ads targeting Jewish candidates for state office in California and Connecticut depicting the candidates clutching wads of cash were previously reported.
Ed Charamut, a Republican running for Connecticut State Senate, sent out a mailer showing his opponent, Democratic State Rep. Matt Lesser, grinning while clutching a handful of $100 bills. The mailer went out on Oct. 30, three days after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 worshippers dead.
Lesser told the Hartford Courant that people called him about receiving “an anti-Semitic flier.”
“I thought there was a mistake,” he told the Courant. “Someone showed it to me and I think it would be a gross understatement to say I was surprised.”
Charamut at first denied that the flier was anti-Semitic, but three days later his campaign posted an apology on Facebook.
“The entire campaign committee, which includes members of the Jewish community, never discussed or considered Mr. Lesser’s ethnicity, race, religion or any other personal characteristic of Mr. Lesser and it was never our intention for the mailer to be anything more than a reflection of Mr. Lesser’s policy record,” the post read. “However, it is clear now that the imagery could be interpreted as anti-Semitic, and for that we deeply apologize as hate speech of any kind does not belong in our society and especially not in our politics.”
In California, Tyler Diep, a Republican running for State Assembly, sent out a mailer showing his Jewish challenger, Josh Lowenthal, grinning while clutching a handful of $100 bills. The flier went out on Sunday. Nine Jewish Democrats in the Assembly sent a letter in protest, saying the image reflected “anti-Semitic tropes.”
“At best, this attack ad reflects an extreme lack of sensitivity,” the letter said. “At worst, it’s bigoted and anti-Semitic. Either way, the mailer is offensive and raises serious questions about Tyler Diep’s fitness to serve in the Legislature.”
Diep’s campaign denied that the image was anti-Semitic, invoking Diep’s own ethnic heritage.
“Tyler is Vietnamese and fled Communist persecution — he is highly sensitive to attempts at exploiting stereotypes to score political points,” the campaign’s statement said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition CEO, strongly condemned the phenomenon.
“This is vile and disgusting,” he said on Twitter. “It is not acceptable in any circumstance. This crap must end!”
He also said his group had raised the issue “at the highest levels” of the White House and the Republican Party.
The 2018 campaign ended with a flurry of other ads and messages that drew criticism for playing on implicit or explicit anti-Semitism. Some of them were issued after the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, which led to a national outpouring of support for Jewish people.
A Green Party congressional candidate in the Cincinnati area launched a radio ad blaming “anti-American Communist Jews like George Soros” for fixing elections. The candidate, Jim Condit Jr., is facing a Republican incumbent and is not being supported by his own party.
“These massive Trump crowds are the real polls,” the ad says. “Not the fake lying polls put out by the big TV networks all controlled by billionaire Communist Jews. These same anti-American Communist Jews like George Soros also direct the three computer election vendors, which have connived their way into counting 95 percent plus of our votes on their secret computer programs, with no effective checks and balances … They fix close elections if they think they can get away with it.”
The manager for the two radio stations running the ad told the Cincinnati Enquirer that he is legally obligated to run campaign ads, even if they have racist or anti-Semitic content.
Condit has railed previously against Zionist control of world politics and claimed that Jews had a role in the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
The Republican Party has also put out a number of ads singling out Soros, a leading liberal donor, that do not mention his religion. In one, he is shown alongside a pile of money. Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, denies that the ads are anti-Semitic.
A robocall sent to Georgia voters on Friday impersonating Oprah Winfrey featured what the Washington Post called “60 seconds of racism” and anti-Semitism. The call was an attack on Democrat Stacey Abrams, a black woman, who is vying with Republican Brian Kemp, who supports President Donald Trump, for governor there.
“This is the magical negro, Oprah Winfrey, asking you to make my fellow negress, Stacey Abrams, the governor of Georgia,” the robocall said. “Years ago, the Jews who own the American media saw something in me: the ability to trick dumb, white women into thinking I was like them and to do, read and think what I told them to.”
The robocall was produced by TheRoadToPower.com, an anti-Semitic video site that’s targeted divisive political campaigns, according to the Post.
