SUPER TUESDAY: Intermarriage, Election Style
A prominent supporter of Hillary Clinton and an equally weighty backer of Barack Obama count themselves as members of the same swanky Beverly Hills synagogue — and the same family.
Toni and Bruce Corwin, both past presidents of Temple Emanuel, are partners in a Clinton-Obama “intermarriage.” The pair hasn’t voted differently since 1968, when Toni voted for Bobby Kennedy in the California primary, and Bruce registered Republican that year so as to cast his vote against Senate candidate Max Rafferty.
In the 2008 primary, Toni, 65, is throwing her weight behind Clinton, while Bruce, 67, is siding with Obama. But the couple, married 40 years, says it hasn’t strained their marriage.
“We tease more than we argue,” Toni said. “It’s my girl and his guy.”
Bruce, CEO of his family-owned chain of independent movie houses, Metropolitan Theatres Corp., was first introduced to Obama two and half years ago, prior to his Illinois Senate run, at a small breakfast for local Democratic Party leaders.
“I called Toni and said, ‘I just heard a future president of the United States,’ never dreaming it would happen this quickly.”
But when Bruce, who currently chairs the board of Temple Emanuel, heard Clinton speak just two months ago at an intimate campaign event in a West L.A. home, he switched camps.
“I’m a flip-flopper on this one,” he said, describing Clinton as “extraordinary and very competent.”
The Corwins have long supported the Clintons, dating back to Bill Clinton’s first presidential run in 1992. They attended the inauguration, and later supported Hillary Clinton’s bid to become a Senator from New York. Both Corwins, in fact, are maxed out on primary campaign contributions for Clinton.
And yet, said Bruce, when he ran into Obama in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel a month later, he was once again mesmerized by the young politician’s magnetism.
“I ran out and shook his hand, and we were talking in the lobby. I said to myself, ‘deep down, this is the guy I want,” he said.
Despite Toni’s unflagging support for Clinton, she was not, she says, upset by her husband’s ultimate choice.
“Everybody’s got to do what they’ve got to do,” she said. “I didn’t try and convince him.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
