Obama names pro-Israel Wasserman Schultz to most powerful party position

JTA – Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s first day as a sophomore in the U.S. House of Representatives, on Jan. 8, 2007, was marked by a number of extraordinary achievements for a woman barely out of her first term.

Named to the Democratic caucus leadership. Named to the all-powerful Appropriations Committee. Named as a major fundraiser -- $17 million -- for the party’s breakthrough 2006 election. Named by a tabloid as one of the 50 most beautiful people on Capitol Hill.

Yet dominating her victory party were blow-ups of headlines from Jewish newspapers: Wasserman Schultz had led the passage of the act establishing Jewish American Heritage Month.

President Obama last week named Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), 44, to the most powerful party position, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. Even before she has formally assumed the job, the question of her Jewish identity has stirred speculation.

Jewish Democrats say Obama’s choice of a successor to former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine in the top party fundraising spot is a signal of Obama's commitment to a loyal constituency: the Jews.

“I guarantee you that her being a woman played a role in the choice, I guarantee you that her being from Florida played a role," said David Harris, the president of the National Jewish Democratic Council. "But I also guarantee you that her being Jewish played a role.”

The question remains open of what role, if any, Wasserman Schultz’s Judaism will play as she leads the Democratic Party into the 2012 elections, when it hopes to re-elect Obama, maintain the majority in the Senate and erode the Republican majority in the House. Wasserman Schultz declined to be interviewed for this story.

“She is so, so excited to be Jewish,” said Shelley Rood, who worked as a legislative assistant in Wasserman Schultz’s office and is now a senior legislative associate at the Jewish Federations of North America. “She really enjoys working with Jewish organizations because she believes their priorities for America are right on.”

Wasserman Schultz arrived at politics through Jewish activism, which has been a centerpiece of her career. The same year Wasserman Schultz was running for her first legislative position, the Florida House in 1992, she joined the National Jewish Democratic Council as a staffer leading its Florida operation.

“It was a regional office where you had one person on her own,” Steve Gutow, then the NJDC director, said of Wasserman Schultz, who was just 25 at the time. “But all the things we wanted to happen, happened. She had a strong sense of self; she had a mind of her own.”

That single-mindedness and willingness to work with what she had shepherded her through stints in both Florida houses, and then for Congress after her old boss, Peter Deutsch, quit his Fort Lauderdale-area district for an unsuccessful U.S. Senate run in 2004.

She won handily and was immediately picked by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), then the minority leader in the House, as a leader. Pelosi asked Wasserman Schultz to push potential first-timers past the finish line in 2006.

That’s the year Wasserman Schultz formed friendships with Kirsten Gillibrand, who won a seat in upstate New York, and with Gabrielle Giffords, who won an Arizona seat (Gillibrand is now a U.S. senator). Wasserman Schultz’s tireless work with both women was critical to winning both races in districts that might easily have swung Republican.

That helped Democrats sweep the House that year and won Wasserman Schultz the chief deputy whip job in her second term, and the plum spot on the Appropriations Committee........

Republicans deride her as a partisan. Hours after the announcement that she’d be the next party chair, the Republican Jewish Coalition issued a statement citing her connection with J Street, a liberal group that calls itself pro-Israel, pro-peace but which the RJC describes as marginal and anti-Israel, to question her judgement.

"In blindly conferring legitimacy on fringe groups like J Street, she has raised serious questions about her own credibility and judgment," RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said.

Wasserman Schultz has praised J Street a handful of times, and she had addressed the organization at least once.

Capitol Hill insiders dismissed the flap as RJC politicking -- Brooks’ statement resulted in immediate praise for Wasserman Schultz from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and from the Jewish Federations of North America. Neither organization is prone to praise promotions to hyperpolitical jobs, so the mere issuance of the statements was a clear establishment message to the RJC to pipe down...........

Still, she remains loyal and available to friends from the earliest years of her career. When she attended a Chabad event recently, she picked out and warmly greeted Rabbi Aron Lieberman, a Fort Lauderdale Chabad director. [Chabad is an extremist sect with writings that espouse Jewish Supremacism.] As a 20-year-old staffer in Deutsch’s office, it had been her job to pick up Lieberman from the airport for the monthly classes Deutsch had with the rabbi..... Read more