Still, for every Jew who made it into the Senate there might be another who didn't. In 1996, independent and Republican voters in Kansas were urged to vote for Rep. Sam Brownback over his Democratic challenger, Jill Docking, through telephone "push polls" that helpfully reminded listeners that Docking was Jewish. And cited that as a good reason to vote against her. Come November, Docking lost.

Brownback insisted he knew nothing about the calls. But Docking's campaign communications director, Scott Swenson says that Brownback's campaign and the Kansas Republican Party constantly referred to Docking as "'Jill Sadowsky Docking' in press releases and in rhetoric. Many reporters commented on how offensive they found it."

Of course, that is her name, I say. "But what is the importance of it if not to put the name 'Sadowsky' out there?" says Swenson. "They were trying to call attention to the fact that Jill was Jewish." Docking agrees with this assessment.

Docking, reached in Wichita, Kan., says such push polls are "a reality of life in America, and I don't think it will change." She also doesn't think the calls changed the outcome of the election. "Those people that would have substantively changed their vote because the push pollers told them I was Jewish probably wouldn't have voted for me anyway. If someone were not tolerant of Jews they were not my voter. But it was very uncomfortable and ugly."

Docking says that such tactics will almost definitely be used against Lieberman. "It will exist, it will happen," she says. But what's more important is how Bush handles it. "I think it is just as important that George [W.] Bush take a stand as Al Gore. I think he should show personal courage as a candidate and address it" by condemning it.

How would Bush handle such a thing? Former New Hampshire Sen. Warren Rudman has a few things to say about that. Rudman, a Jewish Republican who was one of Arizona Sen. John McCain's biggest backers, heard of a pro-Bush push poll that referenced Rudman as a McCain supporter, mentioned his faith and mispronounced his name -- I think it was "Rood-Mahnn" -- to make it sound more ethnic.

"Here were some phone calls that were made saying that 'John McCain's campaign manager is a New York Jew' -- which I took exception to since I'm from New Hampshire," Rudman says. "There was anti-Semitism there." And while Rudman says he doesn't think Bush himself knew anything about the calls, he faulted the Bush campaign nonetheless. On NBC's "Meet the Press" on Feb. 27, Rudman berated Bush advisor Karl Rove for the calls, saying, "There was certainly no one in that campaign who stood up and said, 'Let's stop it.'"

Added Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who was also supporting McCain, "I don't think Governor Bush is at all bigoted but he was willing to shake hands with the devil to make the deal to get himself elected in South Carolina and that's what's wrong."

When I reach Rudman, he tells me how happy he is that Lieberman's been named to Gore's ticket. "It's been 40 years since Kennedy won; it's taken 40 years to put someone of the Jewish faith on a ticket, and it's about time," he says. "Look, there is anti-Semitism in America. I ran into some of it in South Carolina. But anybody who tried that would be electing Al Gore" because of a backlash.

Plus, Rudman says, Lieberman is "a VP pick that might make a difference. He's a wonderful guy, a very moderate guy and a fine human being. And that's how the American people will look at him ... As a first-rate human being, as a good U.S. senator, as a man very devoted to his faith, who happens to be Jewish. For those people on the fringe that will vote against Joe Lieberman because he's Jewish, they are not the kind of people who would have ever voted for Al Gore to begin with."

Before Rudman had even met McCain, the era of modern Jew-baiting push-polling began. Coincidentally, or not, it started in South Carolina with former South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell, who managed Bush's glorious South Carolina victory. According to a 1986 report in the New York Times, in 1978, when Campbell was running for the U.S. House against Greenville, S.C., Mayor Max Heller -- a Holocaust survivor born in Austria -- Campbell's campaign commissioned a poll to see if voters cared that Heller was "(1) a Jew; (2) a foreign-born Jew; and (3) a foreign-born Jew who did not believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior."

No. 3, they discovered, voters cared about.

Thirty days before the election, a third-party candidate, Don Sprouse, suddenly showed up. Days before election day, he announced that Heller should not be elected because he didn't "believe Jesus Christ has come yet"; Heller lost by 6,000 votes. (Campbell denied any collusion with the third-party candidate, though he acknowledged the questions on his poll.)

Lieberman's religion "might make a difference," Heller says in a phone interview on Tuesday. "There's always going to be some people that will do that regardless, let's not kid ourselves. There are people in this world who don't like anyone who's different from what they are ... If he were black, they wouldn't like him because he was black. We're kidding ourselves if we say otherwise. The question is, 'How many people will that be?'"

Heller says that during his 1978 race, there were evangelical churches that supported him since he was an observant Jew. "They said that I lived up to my religion," he says. "And the same thing might happen today with Lieberman. Even the so-called Christian right, they might say 'Here we have someone who lives up to his religion, and the fact is that the morals and the ethics are something that he observes."

"Things have changed," Heller says. "But I'm not saying it's going to be easy for him. I'm not going to say that the country is going to vote against him because he is Jewish; some will. But it's still going to be the issues. It's still going to be Democrat vs. Republican."

"Whether I lost the election because I am Jewish, I don't know," Heller says. "I never took a survey. And people wouldn't tell you, anyhow."

Note: This story has been corrected.

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