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Wednesday, November 5, 2008

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Featured Stories Jews looked past worries to embrace Obama Exit polls from Tuesday's election showed Barack Obama matching previous Democratic nominees, garnering 78 percent of the Jewish vote. Read more » Obama faces global disarray, Mideast challenges Barack Obama has survived the longest and roughest election season in memory to assume control of a free world in free fall: A collapsing economy, a resurgent Iran, an obstreperous Russia. Read more » Economic crisis at top of congressional agenda The economic crisis that dominated the last couple months of the presidential campaign will be the major focus of Congress next year as well, say Jewish political insiders. Read more » The Chosen: Jewish members in the 111th U.S. Congress A complete list of the 44 Jewish members - 13 senators and 31 representatives - who will serve in the 111th U.S. Congress Read more » News in Brief All six Jewish freshmen in the U.S. House of Representatives will return to Washington in January. The U.S. Senate race in Minnesota between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and comedian Al Franken is likely to go to a recount. Two Jewish candidates were elected to Congress for the first time. A blind rabbi has lost his race for Congress. European Union officials invited Palestinian lawmakers, including members of Hamas, to visit its Brussels headquarters next spring. U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg won his fifth Senate term in New Jersey and Carl Levin won his sixth in Michigan. A Chinese-American Jew and a Jewish Latina woman both lost their congressional bids. Jeanne Shaheen, the former New Hampshire governor, defeated incumbent U.S. Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) Shimon Peres praised the election of Barack Obama as an opportunity to end the "world crisis" and as an "end of racism."

Featured Stories Jews looked past worries to embrace Obama by Ron Kampeas · November 5, 2008 Breakdown of the Jewish vote in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, according to initial exit polling data. (JTA Staff) WASHINGTON (JTA) - For some Jewish voters, the strangeness of Barack Obama was like a recurring dream: unsettling and then settling in, and then, suddenly, revelatory. Ari Wallach described breaking through to elderly Jews in Florida who had resisted voting for the son of the man from Kenya, the tall black man with the middle name "Hussein." "It wasn't only his policy on Israel and Iran, on health care," said Wallach, whose Jewsvote.org led the "Great Shlep," an effort to prod young adults to get their Jewish grandparents in Florida to vote for Obama. "His biography feels so Jewish, it feels like an Ellis Island archetype. People felt more comfortable when I talked about where he came from, it resonated so deeply-surprisingly among older Jews." For months, polls showed Obama languishing at about 60 percent of the Jewish vote, a critical chunk short of the 75 percent or so Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) garnered in 2004. But exit polls from the Tuesday election showed Obama matching those results, garnering about 78 percent of the Jewish vote against 22 percent for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his Republican rival. Wallach credited the campaign's late-campaign blitz of Jewish communities, joined by groups like his own, for converting the candidate from stranger to standard bearer for a Jewish ethos. "It resonated much more than I thought it was going through in these parts of the Jewish community," he said. It was an uphill battle, starting with rumors that Obama was a hidden Muslim, that he wasn't a genuine, born American. The subterranean campaign soon burst through semi-legitimate and then legitimate forums; Obama was not a Muslim, these conservatives and Republicans said, but he might have been raised a Muslim and later had radical associations. The Republican Jewish Coalition ran ads coupling critiques on Obama's dovish policies with guilt-by-association jabs at his former pastor who embraced Third World liberation theology, at associates at the University of Chicago and during his early political career who had radical pasts, at advisers who had once delivered sharp critiques of Israel and the pro-Israel community. The negative campaign glossed over Obama's deep ties in the Chicago Jewish community and how he has picked a pre-eminently pro-Israel foreign policy team. Matt Brooks, the RJC's executive director, said the ads raised legitimate questions about Obama's judgment, and had an effect: Obama was outpolling Kerry among Jews by only about 2 percent, he said, whereas he was doing much better than Kerry had among other constituencies, including Catholics, blacks and Hispanics. "This is a huge political tsunami that has hit Republicans across the board," Brooks said, referring to the economic crisis that helped precipitate Obama's blowout win on Tuesday. "It's a testament to McCain that we've done as strongly as we have to hold onto our support," he said, noting that Obama's Jewish results lagged slightly behind showings for Al Gore in 2000, and for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Brooks said he stood by his group's ad campaign. "There's no reason for regrets," he said. "We had an important and meaningful debate in the community." Democrats said the overwhelming Jewish rejection of the campaign made them proud. "I'm ecstatic by the outcome and the confidence the Jewish community showed Obama in the teeth of some of the nastiest campaigning I've ever seen," said Ira Forman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. "People got a chance in the last three months to see Barack Obama and the idea that they should be afraid or frightened didn't wash." Key to the effort were waves of Jewish surrogates-chief among them U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.)-who blanketed Jewish communities in swing states in the campaign's final weeks. Wexler had been on board with the Obama campaign from the outset. A number of other surrogates who had been loyal to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) added weight to the campaign once she conceded the primaries race over the summer. "I've never seen a presidential campaign so well-organized in the Jewish community," Forman said, referring to the Obama outreach effort. It remains to be seen whether the concerns Brooks and the RJC pushed forward will eventuate. In his acceptance speech, Obama once again coupled diplomatic outreach with a tough take-all-comers posture. "A new dawn of American leadership is at hand," he said. "To those who would tear the world down, we will defeat you; to those who seek peace and security, we support you." J-Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby that led a campaign to get Jewish newspapers to reject the RJC ads, said it was vindicated. "Tonight, American Jews resoundingly rejected the two-year, multimillion dollar campaign of baseless smears and fear waged against him by the right wing of our community," J-Street's director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said in a statement. "Surrogates and right-wing political operatives in our community stopped at nothing in their efforts to sway Jewish voters against Obama. With exit polls showing Barack Obama's share of the Jewish vote equal to 2004 levels, it is absolutely clear that their efforts failed." Some Democrats said McCain, once popular among Jews because of his willingness to reach across the aisle, hurt himself in the community by choosing the deeply conservative and relatively inexperienced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. An American Jewish Committee poll commissioned in September found that 54 percent of American Jews disapproved of the Palin pick, compared to just 15 percent who disapproved of Obama's decision to tap Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.). But Obama's appeal to Jews might have been most deeply rooted in shared values, said Mik Moore, Wallach's partner in JewsVote.org. "Folks just wanted to be with us, with the more progressive candidate; it's where their heart is," he said. Obama faces global disarray, Mideast challenges by Ron Kampeas · November 5, 2008 U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, seen here on a visit to Sderot, Israel on July 23, 2008, faces myriad challenges in the Middle East and around the world. (Dina Kraft) WASHINGTON (JTA) - Barack Obama emerges from a maelstrom into a vacuum. The U.S. senator from Illinois has survived the longest and roughest election season in memory to assume control of a free world in free fall: A collapsing economy, a resurgent Iran, an obstreperous Russia. "He's going to have his hands full with a recession, a housing crisis, Wall Street, domestic legislation, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran," said David Makovsky, a senior analyst with the Washington Center for Near East Policy. Obama garnered 52 percent of the popular vote and 338 electoral votes Tuesday to win the presidency following a sometimes bitter campaign against his Republican challenger, U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who picked up 46 percent of the popular vote and 163 electoral votes. As of Wednesday morning, three states were too close to call. Among Jewish voters, exit polls showed Obama scoring about 78 percent of the vote compared to 22 percent for McCain, surpassing the estimated 75 percent Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) garnered in 2004. No matter who was elected president, that individual would have to to re-accrue the political capital squandered by President Bush in his last years of office, said Steven Spiegel, a political scientist at UCLA. Obama, however, made a better case than McCain, Spiegel said. "What Obama is really offering is the olive branch in one hand and the other is a fist," he said. Conservatives and some Republicans tried to use Obama's exotic background against him, particularly in the Jewish community. But in the end, voters went with the son of a woman from small-town Kansas and a nominally Muslim father from the Kenyan hills-a choice that some observers say will be likelier to repair relations with an international community alienated by a president who once famously said nations either stand with or against the United States. "Obama can say 'I'm a different person with a different approach, we're going to work with you on global warming, family planning, we're going to be broader in our approach, we're not looking for fights with Russia, we have a much more nuanced policy," Spiegel said. M.J. Rosenberg, the legislative director of the Israel Policy Forum, which strongly favors an increased U.S. role in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process, said Obama's unlikely path to the presidency was a game-changer when it comes to foreign policy. "He was elected to the Senate four years ago, he defeated Hillary Clinton, he defeated John McCain, he's African American. Because it's a transformational presidency, he can do things other presidents might not have been able to do," Rosenberg said. It is precisely this possibility of possibility that excites or worries Jewish political activists, depending on their political stripes. Obama's Jewish backers argue that his victory will provide a significant boost in U.S. credibility and influence that can be used to increase international pressure on Iran and support for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Detractors, on the other hand, have predicted that in his desire to win international respect, Obama could end up pressuring Israel and backing away from confrontation with Iran. What's clear, experts say, is that Obama faces an almost unprecedented challenge for a new president. Yoram Peri, a Tel Aviv University political scientist on sabbatical at American University in Washington, described a world facing fundamental historic changes. "I'm thinking of periods such as after the Second World War when the super powers devised a new world, or the Vienna Congress" of 1814-15 that reconfigured Europe," he said. "You need a complicated, comprehensive approach to the new situation." Don't worry too much about Obama being "tested" as a young, inexperienced president, as the McCain campaign had charged, said Yitzhak Reiter, a Hebrew University professor who just published "War, Peace and International Relations in Islam." "Being an Israeli, I know that whenever a radical group has a plan in mind and are able to carry it out, they carry it out," he said. "If they were able to challenge America, they would have done it by now." The most serious challenge, Peri said, is the potential of an Iran with nuclear weapons-a possibility that Israel believes could occur within two years. "It will totally change the balance of power in the Middle East, not just because Iran might use the bomb, but because conventional power has been defined by non-conventional power, the fear that Israel has a nuclear capability," he said. With a nuclear Iran, "assuming Hezbollah or Syria attacks Israel, Israel will be deterred from deterring them." The same goes for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf states that fear Iranian hegemony. "The whole balance of power in the conventional sphere changes," Peri said. Obama's likely path may be determined by those who advise him, Peri said, noting the preponderance of Clinton administration veterans who favor diplomatic engagement as the best path for ensuring Israel's security. For example, in recent months, former U.S. Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross has emerged as Obama's senior adviser on Israel and Iran, and his top staffer on Jewish issues has been another Clinton-era veteran, Daniel Shapiro. "The people I know who are surrounding Obama have a more progressive view of the Middle East, want to see a peace between Israel and Palestinians," Peri said. "They see the differences in the Arab world and understand you have to take into account Arab interests vis-a-vis Iran." Ross argues that the United States needs to play a more consistent and involved role in Israeli-Palestinian talks, but he also has ruled out the establishment of any "artificial" timelines for establishing a Palestinian state. On Iran, Ross has echoed Obama in arguing that the United States needs to increase its level of diplomatic engagement with Tehran, but says such an approach must be coupled with tougher sanctions in order to block Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Mitchell Bard, the director of the American Israel Cooperative Enterprise and the author of "Will Israel Survive?," was heartened by the Obama campaign's stated intention to make Iran a priority in its first months. "He has to make some decisions early on to create some action to prevent Iran from getting to the point of no return," Bard said. He said Obama's ability, proven during his campaign, to build alliances across the political spectrum would serve him well. "He has the personal chemistry, the potential for building relationships," Bard said, noting that Bush's first term was well served by the personal relationship he developed with Tony Blair, the British prime minister at the time, despite policy differences. Spiegel said Obama's willingness to engage diplomatically suggested he would succeed where the Bush administration ran into a wall-in building an international alliance to isolate Iran. "Obama starts out popular, people want to establish good relations," he said. "It's going to be much easier to sell sanctions." Under those circumstances, Spiegel said, Iran should soon face a ban on imports of refined fuel. Iran, with a refining infrastructure in disarray, relies on imports for 40 percent of its petroleum use. Such a ban, coupled with the decline in the price of crude, should hit the Iranian economy hard. "If the price of oil is dropping and not rising, and with truly effective sanctions, then you've got a much better chance" of getting Iran to stand down from its weapons program, he said. Obama has said he would couple sanctions with diplomatic outreach as a means of persuading Iran. Makovsky predicted that such an outreach would not occur until after Iranian presidential elections next summer in order not to hand a victory to incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and wishes Israel did not exist. If such outreach fails, Makovsky said, an Obama administration will at least have earned greater credibility if it is forced into a military option. "If those negotiations don't work, he will have some very tough calls to make, but he will probably believe he is stronger for having made the approach," he said. Obama, who emphasized the Iraq quagmire during much of his campaign, until recently was believed to be likelier than McCain to have attempted to reshape the international alignment, tamping down tensions with Russia and refocusing international attention on Islamist extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is less likely now with the economic crisis, Peri said. "Without the economic crisis, I think global issues would have been dealt with sooner," he said. Even with narrower expectations, experts agreed that the likeliest beneficiary of Obama's victory in the Middle East would be Israel-Syria talks. Bush has discouraged this track, and McCain's campaign suggested he would have continued that policy. Israel and Syria, having engaged in back-channel talks through Turkey, have all but reached an agreement, including security arrangements, analysts say. Syria is seen as close to agreeing to pull itself out of Iran's orbit and to cut off terrorist groups. The remaining obstacle is Syria's desire to get back into the good graces of the United States, something that American hawks have been resisting in part because of Syria's continued designs on Lebanon. "It won't take more than a few months to reach an agreement," Peri said. "With a green light from the United States, the deal is done." Another factor favoring a Syrian agreement is that all the leading candidates in the Israeli elections-including Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu-in the past have committed themselves to a peace with Syria that would include a concession of at least part of the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. Experts disagreed on what the Obama victory means for Israel-Palestinian negotiations. Peri and Makovsky noted the intractability of the Palestinian split between moderates in the West Bank and Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip-a balance of power many believe makes the creation of a Palestinian state impossible at this time. But Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum predicted that despite the Palestinian disarray, Obama would press on with the negotiations because the outline of an agreement is known, and achieving it would facilitate every other foreign policy initiative. "You get a hell a lot of mileage out of getting these two peoples together," he said. "A president who has the leadership to have a signing ceremony looks like a magician." But Obama's Jewish detractors are concerned. Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, said his group had deep-seated worries about Obama, but as a tax-exempt organization could not speak of them until now. "We are worried that he will put enormous pressure on Israel to make one-sided concessions to the Palestinian Arabs without demanding that the Palestinian Arabs fulfill their obligations" under peace agreements, Klein said. Klein cited as a basis for his concerns Obama's advisers, including Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Tel Aviv who has counseled pressuring Israel, and friendships with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi, all strident critics of Israel. Regarding Iran, Klein referred to Obama's pledge last year to meet with Ahmadinejad, saying that "Someone who said he will sit down with this Iranian Hitler, Ahmadinehjad, without preconditions is clearly someone who will not do what needs to be done to prevent nuclear weapons in his hands." Economic crisis at top of congressional agenda By Eric Fingerhut · November 5, 2008 New York City Comptroller William Thompson, Jr., left, and New York State Comptroller Thomas Dinapoli speak about the financial crisis during a rally on Wall Street on Sept. 21, 2008. (Obama for America) WASHINGTON (JTA)-The economic crisis that dominated the last couple months of the presidential campaign will be the major focus of Congress next year as well, say Jewish political insiders. With a bolstered Democratic majority on Capitol Hill and a Democrat at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, that means measures to stimulate the economy and help out those impacted by the downturn. It also includes actions in areas that have a large impact on the U.S. economy, such as health care and energy. "Under a Democratic president, I expect to see policies more focused on supporting the middle class as well as society's most vulnerable," said Tom Kahn, staff director and chief counsel of the House Budget Committee. The focus of the Jewish federation system will be on "dealing with the economic crisis," said William Daroff, the United Jewish Communities' vice president for public policy and director of the group's Washington office. Daroff noted that Jewish social service groups are being hit from "two different sides" by the downturn, with a decline both in charitable contributions and aid from cash-strapped state and local governments as well as an increase in the number of people in need of social services. Chief among his organization's goals will be to raise the Federal Medical Assistance Percentages, which would increase the financial contribution of the federal government to state social service programs such as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Program, or SCHIP. That would specifically benefit nursing homes that depend on reimbursement from Medicaid. Such a hike is likely to be a part of any "economic enhancement" package offered by Democrats, said a congressional insider who asked not to be named. Such a package could be offered during a lame-duck session later this month or after the new Congress convenes in January. It would also include an extension of unemployment insurance and funding for infrastructure projects. Also likely to be on the federation system's agenda, Daroff said, would be various initiatives to spur charitable donations. They include making permanent and expanding the amount of the IRA charitable rollover, which allows charitable donations of up to $100,000 from a regular or Roth IRA without it counting as taxable income through the end of next year, and adding a charitable deduction that taxpayers could take even if they don't itemize their deductions. Daroff said that with Democrats dominating the levers of power in Washington, his organization might take a different tack in promoting its proposals than it would with the GOP in control. "With Republicans, you stress tax incentives and credits," he said. With Democrats, "you're more likely to stress social service programs." Daroff said, however, that just because Democrats have more of an affinity for such programs doesn't mean it will be a slam dunk. Every Congress is different, he said, and it takes time to discover "where the levers of power are and which issues will most resonate." Rabbi David Saperstein, the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said his group would be working to expand SCHIP, perhaps to cover all children. Saperstein and others said development of alternative energy sources and other vehicles to help the United States move toward energy independence also would be a priority for Jewish groups. The "economic enhancement" package Democrats are working on is expected to include incentives to create environmentally related "green jobs." With so much focus on the economy, it is unclear how much attention will be paid-by both the new president and Congress-to Obama's campaign promise to continue a modified version of Bush's faith-based initiative. Non-Orthodox Jewish groups opposed Bush's faith-based effort, while Orthodox groups have been supportive. Nathan Diament, the director of the Orthodox Union's Institute of Public Affairs, said he believed that Democrats who objected to Bush's version of providing funds to religiously infused social-service groups might be more receptive to a pitch from someone of their own party. But Marc Stern, the interim co-executive director of the American Jewish Congress, said Obama's pledge to not allow recipients of government funds to discriminate in hiring will bring objections from religious groups that supported Bush's initiative. Also a possibility is legislation to permit embryonic stem-cell research, which was backed by all corners of the Jewish community and passed easily in the last Congress but vetoed by Bush. Obama supports the bill. Efforts to roll back Bush administration restrictions on funding for contraception and its promotion of abstinence-based sex education programs could also be taken up by the 111th Congress. As for Israel, one congressional insider said that compared to 2006, when the Democratic takeover of Congress ushered in new committee chairmen throughout the House and Senate, Tuesday's election won't bring much change to Capitol Hill. And with an election in Israel on the horizon as well, the insider said it would be premature to speculate on any new initiatives from Congress or the new administration. The Jewish community is likely to continue to keep attention on the threat to Iran. Legislation that Obama sponsored earlier this year that would make it easier for companies and pension plans to divest holdings from the Islamic Republic was blocked by Republicans in the final weeks of the campaign but now is a possibility. The upcoming fiscal year will be the second in the 10-year, $30 billion military aid package to Israel approved by Congress, and no change is expected. Obama expressed support for the plan in his speech to AIPAC earlier this year. The Chosen: Jewish members in the 111th U.S. Congress By Ami Eden · November 5, 2008 The following is a list of the 44 Jewish members -13 senators and 31 representatives - who will serve in the 111th U.S. Congress that convenes in January: U.S. SENATE Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) Norm Coleman (R-Minn.)** Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)** Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) Carl Levin (D-Mich.)** Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) John Adler (D-N.J.)* Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) Howard Berman (D-Calif.) Eric Cantor (R-Va.) Stephen Cohen (D-Tenn.) Susan Davis (D-Calif.) Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) Bob Filner (D-Calif.) Barney Frank (D-Mass.) Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) Jane Harman (D-Calif.) Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) Steve Kagen (D-Wisc.) Ron Klein (D-Fla.) Sander Levin (D-Mich.) Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) Jared Polis (D-Colo.)* Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) * Elected to Congress for the first time ** Senators who were re-elected (Coleman defeated Democratic challenger Al Franken in Minnesota by 571 votes, but a recount is expected. Franken also is Jewish, leaving 13 Jewish senators regardless of who emerges as the winner.)

News in Brief All Jewish freshmen returning All six Jewish freshmen in the U.S. House of Representatives will return to Washington in January. The lawmakers, all Democrats who won their re-election bids on Tuesday, are: Steve Kagen in Wisconsin, Paul Hodes in New Hampshire, Ron Klein in Florida, John Yarmuth in Kentucky, Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona and Steve Cohen in Tennessee. Kagen had the smallest margin of victory-about six points in a rematch of his 2006 race with Republican John Gard. All the others won at least 55 percent of the vote. That included Giffords, whose race against Arizona Senate president Tim Bee pitted former elementary and middle school classmates against each other. Recount expected in Franken-Coleman race The U.S. Senate race in Minnesota between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and comedian Al Franken is likely to go to a recount. With nearly 2.9 million votes cast, Coleman defeated Franken by 571 votes, 1,210,942 to 1,210,371, the Associated Press reported. The final margin was well within a state mandate for an automatic recount, which may not be finished until December. The candidates, both Jewish, have fought an intensely bitter campaign. Franken, a Democrat, accused Coleman of corruption and Coleman used Franken's satiric writings against him. Two new Jewish congressmen elected Two Jewish candidates were elected to Congress for the first time. One of them-Jared Polis, 33-has made history as the first openly gay non-incumbent male elected to Congress. He will represent Colorado's heavily Democratic 2nd Congressional District, which includes Boulder and other Denver suburbs. Polis is a multimillionaire Internet entrepreneur who founded the Internet site for his parents' Blue Mountain Arts greeting card company and donated more than $5 million to his campaign. In the campaign, he emphasized his background as a champion of public education-he is a founder of two Colorado charter schools and a six-year member of the state Board of Education. He also supports a universal health-care system and a quick end to the war in Iraq. Also elected to Congress on Tuesday was John Adler, a Democrat who won an open seat in Trenton, N.J., that had been held for 20 years by Republican Jim Saxton, who is retiring. Adler, a longtime state legislator, is Jewish. Blind rabbi loses congressional bid A blind rabbi has lost his race for Congress. Dennis Shulman was defeated by three-term incumbent Rep. Scott Garrett in New Jersey's 5th Congrssional District by a 56-42 percent margin. "We did not win the election, but we were right" on the issues, including education, health care, the environment and the Iraq war, Shulman said in his concession speech in Paramus, N.J.. Shulman,who received national attention for his unique personal story, had called Garrett "too conservative" for the Bergen County-area district, and had accused the Republican of taking an improper tax break and being too close to a mortgage company connected to the economic crisis.Garrett denied any wrongdoing, Garrett denied any wrongdoing and responded in kind, airing a negative advertisement accusing Shulman of wanting to negotiate with Hamas terrorists and calling him "too extreme for New Jersey." (Shulman denies supporting talks with Hamas, saying he backs whatever diplomatic approach that Israel adopts on the issue.) Garrett called on Shulman to "renounce" the endorsement he received from the left-leaning pro-Israel group J Street. Shulman defended the endorsement, saying he backs the new group's desire to see the United States play a more active role in promoting Israel-Palestinian negotiations. Garrett has received the endorsement of the New Jersey-based pro-Israel political action committee NORPAC. Only Jewish House Republican re-elected The only Republican Jewish member of the House of Representatives has been re-elected. Rep. Eric Cantor, from Virginia's 7th Congressional District in the Richmond area, serves as the chief deputy minority whip for the GOP and has been rumored as a candidate for an even higher position in the party leadership. His name also was floated as a possible running mate for John McCain this summer. Lautenberg, Levin win again U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg won his fifth Senate term in New Jersey and Carl Levin won his sixth in Michigan. Lautenberg, 84, the Democrat, defeated Republican Dick Zimmer in one of two U.S. Senate races matching two Jewish candidates this year. Lautenberg stressed his record as a protector of the environment and foe of big oil. Former U.S. Rep. Zimmer was best known for his sponsorship of the federal version of Megan's Law, which requires notification of neighbors when a sex offender moves into a neighborhood. Zimmer ran a tough race in 1996 against Bob Torricelli, but Lautenberg held a comfortable lead throughout the campaign this year. Carl Levin, the Democratic Jewish chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, handily fended off a longshot challenge from Jack Hoogendyk, a state representative. Eng, Taddeo defeated A Chinese-American Jew and a Jewish Latina woman both lost their congressional bids. Democrat Hank Eng, a recent convert to Judaism, was defeated by Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a Republican, in the race for retiring GOP lawmaker Tom Tancredo's seat. No Democrat has won the seat since it was created in 1980. Eng, a New York native born to Chinese immigrants, married a Jewish woman and converted as his daughter approached bat mitzvah. In South Florida, Colombian-born Democrat Annette Taddeo lost to 19-year GOP incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The Cuban-born Republican has long been a strong advocate for Israel and currently is ranking minority member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Shaheen wins in N.H. Early returns suggest that Jeanne Shaheen, the former New Hampshire governor, defeated incumbent U.S. Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) Sununu had been a leading Republican backer in the U.S. Senate of greater U.S. engagement in the Middle East; in his earlier career in the U.S. House of Representatives, he often bucked initiatives backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. His father, John Sununu, had a tense relationship with pro-Israel groups when he served the first President Bush as chief of staff. Shaheen's campaign, her second race for the Senate seat against Sununu, used Sununu's past in a pitch for pro-Israel support, particularly in a letter from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is Jewish. Both candidates have Arab-American connections; Sununu is of Palestinian descent and Shaheen's husband, Bill, a prominent lawyer and Democratic activist in the state, is also an Arab American. Peres hails Obama victory Shimon Peres praised the election of Barack Obama as an opportunity to end the "world crisis" and as an "end of racism." "It was an American election and a worldwide choice," the Israeli president said in a statement praising the Democrat for winning the presidency Tuesday. "I don't recall any other election that practically all of humanity was following with hope and concern. I want to congratulate the newly elected President: young, fresh, promising, representing a change and introducing change. The changes that I can mention - it is an opportunity to escape the present world crisis and enter into a new era of cooperation, of productive economy and of human solidarity. "In a way, it is an end of racism. There is no longer any way that any white man can claim superiority, nor any black person feel discrimination. We are the same people, and this election is a great statement to that effect." Peres also praised Obama's Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and revealed advice he had given Obama when he met him over the summer. "When President Obama was here, he asked me what he can do for Israel," Peres said. "My answer was: be a great President of the United States of America. If you will be a great President of the United States of America, you will have great promise for Israel as well, and for all of the region and for all of our neighbors. Nobody should look at whose side the President is on - he just has to be on the side of peace." Peres, an amateur poet, attached to the statement the full text of a letter he had written to Obama: "Dear Mr. President, The world needs a great leader. It is in your making. It is in our prayers. God bless you." Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, also welcomed Obama's election, noting his tour of a town besieged until recently by terrorists based in the Gaza Strip. "During Barack Obama's recent visit to Israel, and especially during the tour we conducted together in the city of Sderot, the people of Israel were impressed by his commitment to the peace and security of Israel," she said in a statement. President-elect Obama has proven his leadership and talents to the whole world, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a congratulatory statement. "The special Israel-US relationship is based on shared values and interests and is characterized by ties of close cooperation. Israel and the U.S. have a common desire to advance peace and stability in the Middle East. We have no doubt that the special relations that prevail between the two countries will continue to strengthen during the Obama administration."

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