Jewish Democrats are looking seriously — and a bit late in the game — at trying to counter GOP efforts to peel off voters, funded heavily by Sheldon Adelson:

A group of wealthy and influential Democrats is quietly putting together their own effort to raise several million dollars to counter Adelson’s efforts in key swing states, by aggressively pushing back on criticism of Obama’s record on Israel and to remind Jewish voters that he agrees with them on domestic issues they care about, I’m told.

The effort — which involves Dems like Harvey Weinstein and Rahm Emanuel — is effectively an acknowledgment that Dems need to take the possibility of Jewish defections seriously, that Republicans have gotten an early start in their efforts to peel off swing-state Jewish voters, and that small shifts could impact the outcome.

“The possibility exists that the swift-boating of the president’s record will confuse voters — that is always a danger situation,” Mark Stanley, a Texas lawyer who is organizing the effort, tells me. “We need to amass the resources to fight against the big amounts of money that Sheldon Adelson and others have given to the Republican Jewish Coalition and also to the Emergency Committee for Israel.”

Adelson, a casino magnate, and other members of RJC’s board have pledged to spend at least $6.5 million on an effort to paint Obama as hostile to Israel in battleground states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The ECI, which was co-founded by Bill Kristol, is also running newspaper and other ads aimed at doing the same.

READ MORE: POLITICO