Congressional candidate expresses remorse but stands by message

By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

On Sept. 22, more than 150 members of the local Jewish community received an e-mail with the banner, “Turner is no friend of the Jewish people.”

Two paragraphs down is the statement, “Click here to fight anti-semitism today!” with a direct link to the Joe Roberts for Congress Contribution Form.

3rd District Democratic Congressional Candidate Joe Roberts

Roberts, who identifies as Jewish, is the underdog Democratic challenger to U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, now running for his fifth term representing Ohio’s Third Congressional District.

The Anti-Defamation League has sent Roberts a private letter of concern about his campaign’s e-mail. Roberts says he regrets that his campaign sent the e-mail but thinks “the message of the e-mail is true.”

According to Roberts, someone with his finance staff sent out the e-mail to a list of 150-180 members of the Dayton Jewish community; Roberts says he only found out the e-mail had been sent when one recipient e-mailed him in response.

“I didn’t compile the list, I don’t know where it came from,” Roberts says. “To be honest with you, it was something that I wish had not gone out. It was a first impression for a lot of folks in the community who didn’t know me and it’s not necessarily how I would have liked that impression to be.”

The e-mail accuses Turner of tolerating “the defamation of our people.” It also asserts that “we need a Jewish voice in Washington now more than ever.”

Specifically, the e-mail cites Turner’s appearance at a Tea Party rally against health care reform, staged at the Capitol on Nov. 5, 2009, two days before the House of Representatives voted on the health care bill.

According to reports in the media and in photographs, rally participants held a pair of banners picturing Holocaust victims with the words “National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945.”

The following week, the ADL urged all Republican members of Congress who attended the rally to “condemn forcefully the invocation of Holocaust imagery” by demonstrators at the event. ADL National Director Abe Foxman sent letters to House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), and Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), the main organizer of the event.

“We urge you to use your stature and platform as a national political leader to reject and condemn the use of Holocaust imagery for political purposes, and to urge your supporters to find other ways to communicate their views,” Foxman wrote in his letter.

Spokespeople for Boehner and Cantor called the signs “inappropriate.” Bachmann said they were “wholly inappropriate.”

According to ADL Ohio Regional Director Nina Sundell, the ADL did not send Turner a letter about the rally.

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio 3rd District)

When asked if he stands by the statement, “Turner is no friend of the Jewish people,” Roberts says, “You know, I think he’s OK on Israel issues, I think that he is opportunistic.”

Roberts adds that he didn’t approve his campaign’s e-mail message to the Jewish community and didn’t agree to have it sent out, though it was something his campaign had discussed.

Sundell says the ADL urges candidates to refrain from “appealing to voters along religious or ethnic lines.”

Addressing the Roberts campaign e-mail, Turner spokesman Adam Murka writes in an e-mail, “This attack from his opponent is completely out of line and is unworthy of a response.”

The e-mail from Joe Roberts’ campaign to a list of more than 150 members of the Dayton area Jewish community on Sept. 22