Sen. Al Franken In, Jewish Repubs Out

Newly minted: Sen. Al Franken (right) speaks to reporters, along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, at the Capitol the day before he was sworn in.

Washington
With Al Franken's transition from comedian to senator now official, the venerable U.S. Senate has its first veteran of "Saturday Night Live," but no Jewish Republicans.

Franken's swearing-in on Tuesday came after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled on June 30 that Franken, a Jewish Democrat, was the winner. It was the culmination of eight months of recounts and legal challenges by his Republican opponent, the incumbent Norm Coleman, who is also Jewish.

Franken's ascension brings to 13 the number of Jewish Democrats in the Senate.

Coleman's defeat comes practically on the heels of the decision by Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter to join the Democratic caucus. The House of Representatives has just one Jewish GOPer, Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia.

For the first time in more than 50 years, a moderate GOP Jewish voice -- embodied over the years not only by Specter, but also by Rudy Boschwitz of Minnesota, Warren Rudman of New Hampshire and the late Jacob Javits of New York -- will be absent from the Senate.

During the court battle over the Minnesota vote, Coleman had been serving as a paid consultant to the Republican Jewish Coalition, an organization for which he often stumped during his years in the Senate. A former Democratic mayor of St. Paul who switched parties after two years in City Hall, Coleman helped recruit Jews to the GOP.

Matt Brooks, the RJC's executive director, said that his organization has an "open-ended agreement" with Coleman, and "we're going to continue together for the foreseeable future," with Coleman serving either "as an ongoing consultant or as a leader involved in a volunteer capacity."

"He has been extremely helpful to us and will continue to be going forward," said Brooks. "Americans, and certainly those in the Jewish community, have lost a great friend and a great leader by not having Norm Coleman in the U.S. Senate."

But Brooks and others who know Coleman predict that he is likely to re-enter the political fray, possibly running for Minnesota governor next year or to head the Republican National Committee.

"There's a lot of positions where his leadership could do the party well," said Jewish GOP activist Fred Zeidman.

Ira Forman, CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said that the June 30 election decision marked "the end of an era" that's partly a reflection of the poor "state of the national GOP."

William Daroff, director of public policy of the United Jewish Communities, the federation umbrella agency, said that having so few federal Republican officeholders in heavily Jewish areas like the Northeast was a key factor in the disappearance of Jewish Republicans from the Senate for the first time in decades.

Daroff, a former RJC official, said that Coleman had been "very helpful" to the Jewish federation system, including his work on securing homeland security grants for nonprofits.

He also mentioned that he was also anticipating a good relationship with Franken.

"We see eye to eye on a great deal of social service issues," said Daroff. "I look forward to him also being a champion of the priorities of the federation system going forward."

Israel was not an issue in the Franken-Coleman campaign, but both candidates appeared at a pro-Israel rally at a Minneapolis Jewish community center in January during the Gaza operation. Franken said then that the U.S. relationship with Israel is a "pillar of our foreign policy," and that he would continue to uphold that commitment if elected.

"Let us stand together to send a clear message to the Israeli people," he said. "In this complex and dangerous world, you do not stand alone."

In a February 2008 interview with the American Jewish World newspaper, Franken said that he hoped that the United States would get more involved in peace efforts in the region, which President Barak Obama has already done.

"We're sort of the indispensable power in the Middle East, and in the world, and we have to play a much more active role than we've been playing," Franken told the paper. "We kind of know what a two-state solution would look like, we just got to get there. We need patient diplomacy, and that requires two things: patience and diplomacy. The bottom line is, Israel deserves to exist with neighbors that recognize its right to exist and who have renounced terrorism as a way of achieving political objectives. With Hamas in Gaza, that's very, very hard right now."

At the time, Franken also encouraged continued talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as talks with the leaders of Syria and Iran.

"As [former Israeli Prime Minister] Yitzhak Rabin said, 'You don't make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies,' " noted Franken. "And I liked Yitzhak Rabin a lot."

Click here to read about Al Franken's showbiz roots.