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Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Jews & the GOP: Senator Norm Coleman: The Washington Times follows Senator Coleman as he stumps for President Bush and the Republican Party:
Some 30 years ago, Mr. Coleman was a rock group roadie for the band Ten Years After, setting up the stage and steadying the bass amplifier during concerts for the 1960s musicians. Today, Mr. Coleman is a roadie of a different sort. The freshman senator, one of only three Jewish Republican Party members of Congress, is traveling around the country appealing to Jewish groups to support President Bush and hoping to reverse a nearly century-long trend of Jewish support for Democrats.

... The Democrat-turned-Republican talks up Mr. Bush's efforts to combat terrorism and the president's support for Israel, but Mr. Coleman also focuses on his own personal transformation — a Brooklyn-born Jew who switched parties — in hopes of swaying Jewish voters.

... The 53-year-old senator, who jokes that before he went to college — "I never met either a Republican or a Lutheran" — gives his testimonial with the passion of a convert.

"I became a Republican to make come to life the ideals I had as a Democrat," Mr. Coleman told a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington last month. "I believe in equality and social justice. The key to justice and equality is for Mom and Dad to have a job."

Mr. Coleman's roots are hardly Republican. During his college days, he protested the Vietnam War and attended the Woodstock rock festival. After receiving his law degree from the University of Iowa, Mr. Coleman worked in the Minnesota Attorney General's Office. He later served as Democratic mayor of St. Paul, Minn., before switching to the Republican Party in 1996, halfway through his eight-year term.

Last fall, Mr. Coleman defeated Democrat Walter Mondale, a replacement for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, in a close election, and this year joined Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the other Jewish Republicans in Congress.

posted by William @ 10/28/2003 09:01:00 AM