Ford's eighth chapter on Jewish political influence opens with Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party machine that ran New York City politics for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ford argued the Jewish community's ties to Tammany were an early case of the political method he traced through 'The International Jew': using organized communal power to win favors from political institutions in exchange for votes and campaign money.
Ford focused on August Belmont Sr. — born August Schönberg in Alzey, Germany, in 1816, who moved to New York and became the American agent for the Rothschild banking house. Belmont (who took the name from the French for Schönberg — 'Beautiful Mountain') was a major figure in New York Democratic politics for decades and chaired the Democratic National Committee from 1860 to 1872. Ford argued that Belmont's double role — the top American man for Rothschild money and a central figure in the Democratic Party — was an early example of Jewish financial power merging with American political machinery.
Ford argued that by 1920, Jewish lawyers held more seats on the American bench than their numbers would suggest, especially in New York, and that this came from organized community effort, not just individual merit. He pointed to rising Jewish enrollment at law schools, the rise of Jewish lawyers' associations, and the organized backing of Jewish political networks for Jewish judicial candidates. Ford did not claim Jewish judges decided cases in the Jewish interest — he admitted that would be hard to prove — but he said a bench with many Jewish members was less likely to rule against Jewish interests when those interests were at stake.
On elections, Ford said Jewish voters were concentrated in big urban states — especially New York — which gave the organized Jewish community outsized weight in presidential elections. When Ford was writing, New York was the largest state in the Electoral College. Ford argued that Jewish voting in New York, organized through community networks and leaders, could swing the state and so the presidential race. He pointed to Jewish newspaper editors, fundraisers, and political operatives in both parties as proof that the Jewish community held leverage over both Democratic and Republican leaders.
Ford also raised naturalization — how immigrants became citizens and voters. He claimed Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe became citizens faster and at higher rates than other groups, and that this was partly due to organized help from Jewish community groups that guided immigrants through the process. Ford did not call this illegal. He called it more proof of the same community organizing he described throughout: the Jewish community acting as a united political body to boost its members' civic participation and political weight.