Tammy Caputi has, by her count, knocked on more than 13,000 doors in her campaign for Arizona state House, and nobody asked her about Israel.
“I wear a Jewish star every day, prominently,” the Jewish Democrat told JNS. “It’s amazing to me that it hasn’t come up at all.”
“I worried about it in the beginning,” she said. “I’m very happy to say it’s a non-issue in my race.”
Caputi, 57, has three daughters, ages 22, 19 and 16. As members of a Reform synagogue in Scottsdale, their rabbi offered to hold her oldest’s bat mitzvah during a congregational visit to Israel.
“It went so well with my oldest that we did it again for my middle daughter,” she told JNS.
The ceremony followed a 10-day tour with fellow synagogue members. “We ended up in Jerusalem in a beautiful park overlooking the Old City,” Caputi said. She even used some of the photos from the trip in campaign mailers.
Caputi, whose husband Steve Caputi, 56, is Italian and works in pharmaceuticals, grew up as a Reform Jew in Boston. On the campaign trail, she said her Jewish connection often bridges party affiliation when she sees a mezuzah on a door frame, and when Jewish residents on the other side of the door see her Star of David necklace.
Greater Phoenix, including Scottsdale, is home to about 100,000 Jews. “Jewish people are a tight-knit community, and it goes across partisanship,” Caputi told JNS.
Scottsdale police told JNS in October that detectives were investigating antisemitic threats against Caputi’s campaign. Caputi said that people “from both sides of the aisle” reached out to “offer help and support in whatever way I need.”
“I’ve always maintained relationships on both sides,” she said. “I have a lot of friends that are Democrats, a lot that are Republicans.”
“I’m a capitalist Democrat,” she said.
Caputi, who works in the construction industry and loves to hike and run marathons, served on the Scottsdale City Council. She is running for the state House, seeking one of two seats representing the fourth district, currently held by Pamela Carter and Matt Gress, both Republicans.
When she knocks on doors, she tells people that “I was your city councilwoman. I’m a small business owner. I’m a capitalist, and I’m a mom,” Caputi told JNS.
Despite the United States operating under a capitalist economic system, she feels the need to “underscore” that she’s a capitalist because of the way the far-left and the media have pushed socialism to the forefront of public discourse, she said.
“I joke that I’m motivated by profit,” she told JNS. “I’m not ashamed of that. That’s the economic system we all live in in the United States.”
On the City Council, she was an independent. Caputi told JNS that she doesn’t see issues “through a very partisan lens.”
“I got criticism from both sides for that,” she said. “But I still believe in the mission. I think everyone should aim for the middle. That’s how we get better decisions.”
In the Democratic primary, Caputi earned 20,043, or 51.7%, of 38,768 Democratic votes. In the GOP primary, Gress earned 18,723, or 45.5%, of 41,159 votes.
Caputi is confident, but she told JNS that there’s “nothing else to do” in her campaign.
“It’s all done. We did all the work,” she said. “Now we’re just waiting these last agonizing couple of days.”
On election day, she plans to be outside the polls, at the required legal distance of 75 feet, talking to voters. Her oldest daughter, a recent college graduate, will join her for part of the day, she said.
“It feels better to be out and amongst people who are voting,” Caputi said.
She noted that when she talks to voters, she hears about “the economy, the cost of living and water.”
“The media wants you to think everybody cares about the fringe issues,” she said. “But that’s never what I hear.”
