SUPER TUESDAY: In McCain’s Backyard, Jewish Paper Backs Barack
In Arizona, home state of Republican Senator John McCain, the local Jewish newspaper is urging its readership to back Barack Obama. Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, an independent family-owned newspaper founded in 1948, published an editorial February 1 endorsing the senator from Illinois.
“He has been a good friend to and strong advocate of the Jewish people and a stalwart supporter of Israel since his earliest days in the Illinois Legislature,” the editorial said. Still, it threw a bone to its hometown boy, saying that of the Republican field, McCain was “far and away the most attractive option.”
While it regularly endorses candidates in local elections, the weekly broadsheet, which has a circulation of 7,000, does not routinely take sides in presidential primaries. This year, said Tim Eckstein, a contributing editor who penned the editorial, it offered up a primary endorsement in large part because Arizona’s primary has far more gravity than in years past.
“This is the first year that Arizona has had a primary when the election wasn’t already decided,” Eckstein said. That, coupled with the fierce competition of this year’s race, inspired the editorial, he said. Eckstein, 38, is the son of the paper’s editor and publisher, Florence Eckstein.
Phoenix, with an active Jewish population of some 83,000, ranks No. 19 of America’s 24 largest Jewish communities, according to the 2006 American Jewish Year Book.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30