Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Chicago Bundler Flips From Obama to Romney

A Jewish fundraiser for Mitt Romney says she turned against President Obama over his 2011 call for Israel to return to 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps, the Washington Post reported.

The bundler, Susan Crown, is a descendant of the now-deceased Henry Crown, a billionaire investor who once owned the Empire State Building.

Crown gave $2,300 to Barack Obama?s campaign in 2007. She does not appear on a list of volunteer fundraisers, or bundlers, for the Obama 2008 campaign. The Romney campaign has released no information on its fundraisers, so it?s impossible to know how much she has raised in this cycle.

?There are a lot of people here who are very disappointed in the president,? Crown told the Post. ?I?m an independent and I?m working as hard as I can for Mitt.?

The Forward reported two weeks ago on a handful of major Jewish donors to the Romney-affiliated super PAC who gave to Obama in 2008.

Susan Crown?s brother Jim Crown remains a major Obama supporter. Jim Crown raised over $500,000 for Obama in 2008 and had raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for him in the 2012 cycle as of the campaign?s latest report.

And though Susan Crown gave largely to Democrats between 2007 and her 2011 donation to Romney, her husband William Kunkler has given to a number of Republican candidates, including John McCain in 2008, Rudy Giuliani in 2007, and Scott Brown in 2010, among others. Like his wife, Kunkler gave to Obama in 2007.

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

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.