Turnover in Congress Dismays Israel's U.S. Lobbyists

By Lucille Barnes

"Traditionally, pro-Israel forces have focused their attention on incumbents, and especially incumbents in key positions; with so many retiring or facing stiff challenges, the stage may be set for a major crisis when the new Congress convenes in January."
James David Besser, The Jewish Week Inc.,
Queens, NY, April 23, 1992

Late in 1991 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's Washington, DC lobby, suffered its most resounding defeat in nine years in its all-out campaign to secure $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees for Israel. Since this was followed by a second defeat over the same issue early in 1992, AIPAC officers must have thought it doesn't get worse than this.

Now, however, they know it does. The organization is in public disarray as its strategists disagree over whether they should rebuild bridges to a Republican administration that has successfully called their bluff twice, or return to the (pre-Reagan administration) practice of working through a Democratic Congress to have their way with both Republican and Democratic presidents, or devote significant resources to both.

In fact, working with Congress is proving extraordinarily difficult in the 1992 election cycle for America's second (after organized labor) best-funded special interest lobby, which normally has no serious problems at all. To assure themselves of AIPAC support, members of Congress need do only two things. They must vote for foreign aid, letting members of key congressional committees maneuver to assure that Israel gets about one-third of the annual worldwide bilateral aid total, and follow AIPAC recommendations on arms sales to Arab countries.

In return, if a congressional incumbent is in serious election year trouble, he or she can look for large-scale help from the 59 pro-Israel PACs that are active in the current election cycle. AIPAC will go to almost any length to rescue an incumbent friend in need, particularly if that friend is a member of one of the key congressional committees.

AIPAC also watches for congressional "enemies" who may have other troubles at home and therefore be vulnerable. AIPAC then will pour money into the campaigns of challengers to these "enemies."

This carrot-and-stick approach is the secret to AIPAC's effectiveness. Some congressional incumbents don't need AIPAC funding. But they don't want a well-funded challenger from their own party in the spring or from the other party in the spring or from the other party in the fall. Or from both, as was the case with Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois after he defied AIPAC's wishes and joined the successful vote in favor of a sale of Boeing-made AWACS early warning military aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1981.

This year, however, nothing is simple. Several senators and at least 69 members of the House of Representatives will not be returning to Congress because of retirement, reapportionment or primary election defeats. Among them are some of AIPAC's best friends in Congress. Week after week Jewish regional newspapers have been expressing dismay that the 103rd Congress will convene next January without such pro-Israel work horses as Senators Brock Adams (D-WA), Alan Cranston (D-CA), Tim Wirth (D-CO) and Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Representatives Ed Feighan (D-OH), Larry Smith (D-FL), Vin Weber (R-MN), Howard Wolpe (D-MI), and Gus Yatron (D-PA).

A Challenge Indeed

For lobbyists who focus on shoring up incumbents, betting on no more than a half dozen challengers, an election in which, thanks both to resignations and reapportionment, a very high percentage of the candidates are challengers is a challenge indeed.

Even communicating its wishes in such a complex election has become a problem for AIPAC. It was taken to court on charges that it steers the contributions of a large number of pro-Israel PACs, particularly those PACs established under misleading names in 1984 by members of the AIPAC Board of Directors, and therefore functions as a PAC itself.

Since PACs are limited to donations not exceeding $10,000 per election cycle to any one candidate, the charge that, while functioning as a PAC, AIPAC has supervised donations in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to a single candidate in a single cycle was serious. AIPAC was acquitted of that charge, but not of another involving steering illegal corporate donations to candidates. Therefore, its cues now are given in the course of meetings its officers and board members hold with candidates, since many of these AIPAC board members are officers of the more than 116 pro-Israel PACs founded in the past 14 years. Working with individual PACs in this manner leaves few footprints.

Another traditional means of getting out the word about congressional friends of Israel in trouble is via the weekly Jewish newspapers that serve virtually every nook and cranny of the United States. However, these newspapers, too, have become aware that an overwhelming majority of Americans strongly disapprove of Israel's "entitlement" programs within U.S. economic and military assistance accounts.

Jewish weeklies therefore have become discreet in how they alert readers to which pro-aid-to-Israel candidates most need their help. But the clues are there. So here are some gleanings from careful pre-election reading of the weekly Jewish press:

AIPAC will go to almost any length to rescue an incumbent friend in need.

"Things are looking distinctly bleak for a leading Jewish senator. Last week's Pennsylvania vote represented a handy victory in the GOP primary for Sen. Arlen Specter. But on the Democratic side political newcomer Lynn Yeakel's surprisingly strong victory indicated that Specter may be facing a steep uphill battle to win a third term in the Senate. Pro-Israel politicos here in Washington have conceded privately that the odds are now distinctly against Specter...(who) is having a hard time raising money from the Jewish community, in part because of the concerns of Jewish women upset about Specter's treatment of Anita Hill, the woman who accused Justice Thomas of sexual harassment. Specter has always won high marks for his support of Israel." (James David Besser in The Jewish Week of Queens, NY, May 14).

Pro-Israel PACs have given Specter $86,600 (for a career total of $265,023) to date in this election cycle. Yeakel has received $5,000 from pro-Israel PACs.

"Republican-oriented AIPAC leaders are concerned that the anti-administration frenzy so evident at their recent conference not blaze out of control and engulf pro-Israel GOP incumbents, such as Senators Packwood (R-OR), Kasten (R-WI), and D'Amato (R-NY), who face tough re-election campaigns this year. AIPAC officers and pro-Israel political action committee activists were hectoring more liberal colleagues over the perception that the anti-Bush rhetoric and liberal 'diversions' like the pro-choice movement, could cost Kasten et al. much needed financial support, and, in New York, votes." (Forward, NY, April 24, 1992.)

Races Being Watched

For those who don't follow pro-Israel politics as closely as the readers of the Jewish weekly Forward, Rep. Les AuCoin seems to have beaten Oregon businessman Harry Lonsdale in the Democratic primary contest (the vote was so close that a recount was mandatory under the law) to face Packwood in the fall. The difference between AuCoin (who has received $9,500 from pro-Israel PACs in this cycle, for a career total of $82,700) and Packwood (who has received $80,500 in this cycle, for a career total of $132,000) is that Packwood has established himself as one of Israel's most zealous supporters in the Senate.

In his frequent fund-raising letters to Jewish contributors (the results of which do not show up in the PAC contributions), Packwood uses the first person when talking about Israel or Judaism, implying that he is an Israeli and a Jew, although he does not have Israeli citizenship and has not converted from Christianity to Judaism.

Similarly, Kasten (who has received $73,000 in this cycle, for a career total of $205,300), whose opponent in the fall will be selected in a September primary, is of particular importance to the pro-Israel establishment because, as ranking minority member of the Senate foreign operations subcommittee, he tried to shepherd the U.S. loan guarantees for Israel through the Senate, and is expected to try again.

D'Amato (who has received $26,000 in this cycle, for a career total of $52,705) is so eager to please Israel that he got ahead of the curve by seeking to torpedo the State Department's request for $87 million in U.S. aid to Jordan on grounds that Jordan's King Hussein is providing supplies to Iraq "in blatant violation of the U.N. embargo." D'Amato and eight other AIPAC-backed Republican senators—Brown (CO), Kasten (WI), Mack (FL), McCain (AZ), McConnell (KY), Murkowsky (AK), Nickles (OK), and Packwood (OR)—exceeded their mandate when they called aid to Jordan "a tragically flawed policy." They were brought up short by Forward, which explained on April 24: "The New York conservative and his colleagues are out ahead of the pack on this one: Israel does not oppose Jordanian aid. It would rather see King Hussein's fragile regime survive and participate in the peace process than risk his demise and the succession of a potentially more hostile successor."

Howard Rosenberg of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, after describing the election year perils of Senators D'Amato, Kasten, Packwood and Specter, notes: "Other pro-Israel lawmakers considered vulnerable are Senators Dan Coats (R-IN), Christopher Dodd (D-CT), and John Seymour (R-CA)." Coats has received $34,000 from pro-Israel PACs in the current cycle, Dodd $42,500 for a career total of $110,678, and Seymour (appointed to an unexpired term and facing his first election) $5,000. Candidates from states with prosperous Jewish communities like New York and California often receive a very high proportion of their pro-Israel contributions as individual donations from constituents that do not show up in PAC filings with the Federal Elections Committee.

Another Broad Hint

In another broad hint to pro-Israel donors, Rosenberg notes that with upcoming retirements from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Stephen Solarz (D-NY) "and fellow Jews Sam Gejdenson (D-CT) and Tom Lantos (D-CA) would become the third-, fourth- and fifth-ranking Democrats on the committee, if they are re-elected." Rosenberg's endorsement is indirect because Solarz, because of redistricting, very likely will have to contest the Democratic nomination in the new 8th district of New York with another proven Democratic friend of Israel, Rep. Ted Weiss. If the New York State Legislature and the Federal courts approve the plan in September, however, people who take their cues from AIPAC will know that Solarz (who has received $1,750 in this cycle, for a career total of $7,600) is a potential chairman of a committee of vital concern to Israel. Weiss has received $500, for a career total of $2,800. (Gejdenson has received $6,500, for a career total of $175,604, and Lantos has received $1,500, for a career total of $46,700.)

The kind of difficult choice between Solarz and Weiss facing pro-Israel voters, Rosenberg complains, is necessitated because "Jewish incumbents have been disproportionately affected by the redrawing of congressional districts after the 1990 census. Many of them have represented districts with large black or Hispanic populations, or ones that border such districts. A 1982 amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 makes it easier for minorities to challenge a state's remapping of House seats on grounds of 'racial gerrymandering.'" All this helps explain AIPAC disarray.

Rosenberg adds: "But the 1982 amendment has also helped make the most pro-Palestinian legislators especially vulnerable this year. They included House Majority Whip David Bonior (D-MI) and Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-OH), who is of Lebanese descent...Notable pro-Palestinian lawmaker Rep. Mervyn Dymally (D-CA) is also retiring."

It didn't take the Jewish press to note that the Maryland Senate race between incumbent Democrat Barbara A. Mikulski (who has received $56,900 from pro-Israel PACs, for a career total of $104,340) and Republican challenger Alan Keyes (who has received no pro-Israel PAC donations) is one where pro-Israel voters can't lose. Mikulski has long been a favorite of pro-Israel PACs. For his part, Keyes has such remarkable rapport with pro-Israel groups that it prompted an article in the Washington Post's "Maryland Politics" column. In 1991, the Post reported, Keyes made 20 speeches to Jewish groups, which paid him a total of $75,250. That year he made a total of $247,650 and this year his is accepting an annual salary of $102,000 from his own campaign committee in addition to whatever he makes from speeches. What makes this African American former Department of State political appointee's words so soothing to pro-Israel ears is what he says about his own party's Middle East Policy.

"I've been very critical of the Bush administration's policy toward the Middle East," he told the Post. "It has been characterized by excessive pressure on Israel and not enough willingness to address Arab responsibility for achieving peace."

However, there are not as many such bright spots as usual on the AIPAC radar. As James David Besser, quoted at the beginning of this article, pointed out in another article in the Queens, NY Jewish Week of April 30:

"For special interest groups in general, and for the pro-Israel community in particular, the wholesale turnover that will mark the elections of 1992 is almost certain to result in a sharp reduction in influence. For Israel, this could have very real and immediate consequences."