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Pat's Friends Trouble
Jewish Community
JAMES D. BESSER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
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T
he problems a revitalized
Pat Buchanan campaign
poses for the Jewish com-
munity are numerous. As
troubling as his comments about
Israel and her "Amen corner" and
his questionable statements
about the Holocaust, is his ap-
parent lack of interest in reach-
ing out to the Jewish community.
Jewish opposition seems a
matter of utter indifference to Mr.
Buchanan, a disturbing turn of
events for a community that is
used to being courted by candi-
dates from across the political
spectrum, and for whom outreach
— some call it pandering— is an
important source of reassurance.
But an even more disturbing
element of the campaign is the
people it has attracted. That
problem was highlighted last
week, when Larry Pratt was
forced to take leave from the cam-
paign after the Center for Public
Integrity charged him with links
to militia groups, and a campaign
worker in Florida was forced to
resign after her connections to a
white supremacist group were
unveiled.
Mr. Pratt "has a track record
of working with leaders of the
Aryan Nations, a white su-
premacist organization that or-
ganizes neo-Nazi skinheads and
leaders of the militia movement,"
said Charles Lewis, chairman of
the center.
Mr. Buchanan accepted Mr.
Pratt's request for a leave of ab-
sence, but he defended his em-
battled co-chair as a "devout
Christian;" he said nothing to
suggest a belief that the militia
movement's paranoia about glob-
al conspiracies and its myriad
connections to the most virulent
hate groups in the nation are in-
consistent with American democ-
racy.
A second campaign co-chair is
the Rev. Donald Wildmon,
founder and director of the Amer-
ican Family Association and a
primary target of the Anti-
Defamation League's critical
study of the Christian right last
year.
"The issue of anti-Semitism
has generated more controver-
sy for the Rev. Wildmon than any
other concern," according to the
ADL report. "Indeed, though Re-
ligious Right leaders such as Jer-
ry Falwell and Pat Robertson
have made anti-Jewish remarks
over the course of 'heir careers,
no major figure in he movement
has made anti-Semitic thinking
more central to his or her agen-
da than has Wildmon."
The Rev. Wildmon's "Jewish
problem," as the report put it, had
to do with his belief in a media
conspiracy against Christians
and Christian values, and with
his anger at the Jewish commu-
nity's hardline church-state po-
sitions.
Many Jews agree that popular
entertainment is filled with sex-
ual excess and violence that harm
families; Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-
Conn, the only Orthodox Jew in
the Senate, is the leading figure
in an effort to convince advertis-
ers not to support such pro-
gramming.
Pat Buchanan:
More controversy.
But Rev. Wildmon carries
these arguments further by ar-
guing that there is a pervasive `-\
anti-Christian conspiracy at
work, not just a bunch of un-
principled people from various re-
ligious backgrounds trying to
make a buck.
Another co-chair is Mike Far-
ris, an unsuccessful candidate for
lieutenant governor in Virginia
and a leading home-school advo-
cate and public school opponent.
Mr. Farris was lead counsel in
a Tennessee court case in which
he sought to stop children in the
public school from reading a
number of books — including The
Diary ofAnne Frank.
That was enough to enrage
some prominent Jewish Repub-
licans, who argued in a fund-rais-
ing letter for his opponent that
Mr. Farris wanted to ban Anne
Frank's words "because they pro-
mote the ideas of tolerance and
that religions are equal."
A fourth campaign co-chair is
Jewish — Rabbi Yehuda Levin,
an Orthodox rabbi who runs an c \
organization specializing in help-
ing women obtain gets. But Rab-
bi Levin is a passionate