Bonior Victory a Defeat for AIPAC

By George Moses

One of the great strengths of the House of Representatives over time has been the stability of its leadership. In recent years, however, that stability has been rocked by rapid turnover. The leadership structure of the House consists of three positions at its top: the speaker of the house, the majority leader and the majority whip. All things being equal, a congressman who is elected to majority leader or majority whip can reasonably expect to advance to the top position of speaker. Since the retirement four years ago of Congressman Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill as speaker, that orderly pattern of succession has gone topsy-turvy.

O'Neill was succeeded by Congressman Jim Wright of Texas, who was forced by scandal to resign from the House in his first term as speaker. Almost simultaneously, Congressman Tony Coehlo, then House majority whip, resigned rather than face an investigation of his personal finances, thus forfeiting his chance at being speaker. His retirement resulted in the election of the first Black member of the House leadership, Congressman Bill Gray of Philadelphia. Last month Gray announced his retirement to become the head of the United Negro College Fund.

This week, in their fourth leadership election in as many years, Democrats in the House of Representatives elevated Congressman Dave Bonior of Michigan to replace Gray as majority whip.

Traditionally, leadership elections are closely held internal affairs of the House. They are among the few elections held by secret ballot and are influenced more by the personal standing of a congress member among his colleagues than by political issues.

In this election a rarity occurred. Not only was a political policy question an issue in what sometimes is little more than a popularity contest, it was a foreign policy issue. It was, of course, a comparison of the two candidates' relative support of Israel.

Bonior has questioned US aid programs to Israel. He also has been a strong proponent of good Arab-American relations and Palestinian rights, although he has never suggested that these should come at the expense of Israel's legitimate security needs. He has publicly and often taken the position that the Middle East policies he advocates are in America's best long-term interests.

By contrast, his opponent, Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland, is closely identified with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's powerful Washington, DC lobby, and its unqualified support of all Israeli policies. This difference was enough to activate AIPAC supporters to inject themselves into the campaign against Bonior.

In the course of his campaign, Bonior met with Tom Dine, AIPAC's executive director, to discuss this turn of events. Dine was unwilling to be seen publicly trying to influence a decision most congress members feel to be an internal Democratic Party matter. He assured Bonior that AIPAC was not officially supporting either candidate, despite the fact that the press already had revealed that AIPAC activists were working hard against Bonior's candidacy.

Bonior has questioned US aid programs to Israel.

Bonior was then faced with a choice. To avoid a pitched battle with AIPAC, Bonior chose to accept Dine's assurances. For its part, AIPAC, perhaps sensing the likelihood of Bonior's victory, wanted to avoid alienating a future leader of the House as well as other congressmen who might resent its interference. It left the anti-Bonior hatchet work to individual AIPAC members.

In the end, Dine's decision to cut his losses by putting some distance between AIPAC and Hoyer's campaign paid off. Bonior won a lopsided 160-109 victory. The degree to which AIPAC influenced the election will never be more than a matter of speculation. There are those who believe that some congress members may have voted for Bonior at least in part to express their resentment at AIPAC's heavy-handed tactics in the past.

This much is certain; Bonior's election is a clear defeat for pro-Israel forces in Washington who had worked hard against his election. Although his victory does not represent anything like the threat to Israel's existence that his detractors wished to portray, his willingness to see America's relations with the Arab world as important in their own right rather than as an adjunct to its relations with Israel means that anti-Arab forces will have a more difficult time using the House of Representatives as their megaphone. And that's some of the best political news from Washington in a long time.

George Moses is a legislative and economic consultant based in Washington, DC.