For Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matthew Brooks, the glass is half full and getting fuller.
That’s how he views the recent success the GOP has had luring Jews away from their traditional alliance with the Democratic Party.
“In the last four elections, the Republicans have been doing better each time,” he says. “In 1996, we had 11 percent [of the Jewish vote]. In 2004, 27 percent of the vote. That’s a shift of 150 percent since 1992.”
The D.C.-based Brooks was in San Francisco recently to meet with local RJC chapters. Of course, in the liberal Bay Area, the Republican operative could have viewed a visit here as a mission behind enemy lines. But he chose not to.
“The reality is actually quite different from the perception,” he says. “People joke that it’s hard to find Jewish Republicans [in the Bay Area]. We are pleased with the growth we’re seeing here.”
Though Brooks, 40, is a lifelong Republican booster, he feels the current geopolitical climate couldn’t be more auspicious for his party and the current president, especially when it comes to Israel.
“Without question,” he asserts, “this president has been the most pro-Israel ever. What he has done in terms of changing the paradigm is unprecedented. His marginalization of Arafat, his unyielding support of Israel, calling it a Jewish state, all sends an incredibly important signal to the world. He has transformed the relationship.”
In a small way, Brooks likes to take some of the credit for this. He cites a 1998 fact-finding trip he and then-Gov. Bush took to Israel.
“I stood next to him at the [Western] Wall,” remembers Brooks. “You could see the tears coming down his cheek. We didn’t realize how the trip would have the impact on history that it did.”
On that same trip, he recalls flying with Bush over the territory of Israel in a helicopter. Also on board, an Israeli politician named Ariel Sharon.
“We wanted [Bush] to understand how important the topography was,” adds Brooks. Flying over Israel’s narrowest point, Bush commented, “We have driveways in Texas longer than that.”
Brooks says the bond formed between Bush and Sharon on that trip carried through to the relationship between the two today.
He further extrapolates his optimism to the broader Middle East, including developments in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Muslim world. “Empowering people to chose their leaders in a part of the world where they’ve been oppressed, where women had no rights, is a good thing,” he says. “People want to be free and prosperous. That’s human nature. But nobody thinks it’s a straight-line trajectory.”
On domestic issues of concern to the Jewish community, Brooks generally supports the GOP party line. Regarding the growing influence of evangelical Christians, Brooks thinks Jews have bigger fish to fry.
“I’m much more worried about the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, anti-Americanism of the progressive left on college campuses,” he says. “We do a disservice to ourselves by treating evangelicals, who are incredibly pro-Israel and philo-Semitic, at arm’s length. We need all the friends we can get.”
Brooks would not say definitively if he supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, but he did note, “Bigotry and hatred of any group or individual is wrong. It’s important that the rights and the lives of [gay people] are protected, that they have equal access to housing, jobs, health care and be free from emotional or physical violence. They should have the right to live happily with their partners. However, I don’t support the codification of [gay] marriage. I’m for civil unions.”
A dapper man who sports suspenders, Brooks decries the shrillness in today’s political debate.
“From a discourse level, we can do better,” he says. “People feel strongly about issues, and the rhetoric is at times intemperate. It’s important to have a lot of passion about your beliefs, but it shouldn’t become personal.”
A native of Philadelphia, Brooks is a graduate of Brandeis University and also holds an MBA from Georgetown University. He says his career in the RJC permits him to blend his twin passions of Judaism and Republican politics.
It even allows him to mix in his third passion. “I’m a huge Frank Sinatra fan,” says the father of two school-age kids. “My office is very un-Washington with all this Sinatra memorabilia in my office. I’m a bit of an anachronism.”