Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1998, pages 42, 114

Election Watch

Pro-Israel PAC Donations Up in 1998 Election Cycle

By Richard H. Curtiss

Direct donations to congressional candidates by pro-Israel political action committees as of June 30, 1998 totaled $l,495,560 for the 1997-98 election cycle. This is a slight increase over Israel lobby spending at the same point in the 1995-96 cycle, which was $1,371,034.

All such expenditures on individual candidates in the current elections are listed in the tables on the following four pages. Senate and House recipients of $5,000 or more in donations from the 62 pro-Israel PACs active in the current cycle are listed separately on this page. A list of the pro-Israel PACs, nearly all of which have deceptive names not mentioning Israel, the Middle East, or Judaism will be carried in a subsequent issue. (All such PACs active since 1976 also are named in the author’s book, Stealth PACs: Lobbying Congress for Control of U.S. Middle East Policy, listed on p.127 of the AET Book Club catalog in this issue of the Washington Report.)

As in previous years, direct donations to candidates by Arab-American and Muslim-American PACs remained negligible. As of June 30 five such PACs had contributed a total of only $15,300 to candidates in all congressional races. This means that pro-Israel PACs outspent the Arab-American and Muslim-American PACs by 98 to 1, which is comparable to previous years. A list of these Muslim-American and Arab-American PACs and of the candidates who received their donations will be carried in the next issue of the Washington Report. Meanwhile, however, these PACs, too, are named in Stealth PACs.

A report on total activity by PACs on both sides of the Middle East issue during the 1997-98 election cycle will be carried in the Washington Report early in 1999, after all of the PACs have filed their final reports with the Federal Election Commission next Jan. 15.

Although Jewish community newspapers throughout the U.S. report some decline in pro-Israel PAC receipts due to a loss of interest in Binyamin Netanyahu’s Israel among American Jews, there are indications that increasing percentages of pro-Israel donations are finding their way to candidates through other routes than the PACs.

Officers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s principal lobby in Washington, DC, have long boasted that for every dollar transferred to candidates via their PACs, another pro-Israel dollar is donated directly. Now there are signs that the PACs themselves are passing “soft money” to state party committees with a wink and a nod indicating which specific candidates the money should be used to support.

Such money could be used by a state party for a voter registration or get-out-the-vote campaign in a constituency in which a candidate with a pro-Israel record is particularly threatened. Perhaps as much as half the money collected by the pro-Israel PACs now is disbursed by such indirect methods.

Since this magazine began tracking pro-Israel PAC donations in 1984, the PACs also have resorted increasingly to “bundling.” Under this system, in addition to the checks PAC members write to the PACs themselves, members are instructed by the PACs to write checks directly to the campaign funds of named candidates. Then these are gathered by a PAC official and delivered in a “bundle” to the candidate. In this manner the candidate knows what special interest the donors are supporting, but watchdogs like this magazine don’t.

This technique also is used for candidates who have announced that they will not accept PAC donations. It is for this reason that the names of some of the most vociferous and extreme congressional supporters of aid to Israel, which already is by far the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, do not appear in the compilations that follow.

It is also true that candidates from states or districts that have large and prosperous Jewish communities, such as the metropolitan New York area, Southern California, Florida, Philadelphia and Chicago, often do not need to turn to pro-Israel PACs for support. They can draw upon donors in their own districts. In fact, in the past Jewish members of Congress from the Los Angeles/Hollywood area have formed PACs of their own to funnel some of this pro-Israel money to like-minded candidates in areas without large Jewish populations.

Although a few so-called “multi-issue” pro-Israel PACs will donate only to Democratic candidates, the AIPAC-established and -directed PACs follow other procedures clearly understood by members of Congress. In cases where competing candidates both have strong pro-Israel records, the AIPAC-directed PACs donate only to the incumbent, regardless of what individual members of the PAC may do on their own.

This is illustrated in this year’s New York Senate race between Democratic challenger Charles Schumer, a vociferously pro-Israel Jewish former House member who lost his seat two years ago as a result of redistricting, and incumbent Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato who, although he is not Jewish, has been equally pro-Israel and, in support of the Israeli government’s agenda, has been an outspoken proponent of the U.S. economic embargo on Iran. Because D’Amato is the incumbent, he already has received $58,700 in pro-Israel PAC donations for the current cycle, while Schumer has received only $1,000 to date. 

Washington Report readers turning to the PAC tables for information about candidates in their state and district are advised to use them in combination with the tables starting on p. 42 of the September issue of the Washington Report, which list the records of every member of Congress on Middle East related-issues. In combination the two sets of charts provide a two-dimensional portrait that will considerably enhance decision making.

For example, because of Michigan’s very large Arab-American and Muslim-American population, most Michigan politicians refrain from actions that would alienate those voters. As a result, incumbent Democratic Rep. Sander Levin from Michigan District 12 emerges as almost a “good guy” in the charts prepared by Washington Report congressional correspondent Shirl McArthur.

The PAC donation charts in this issue, however, show that Sander Levin is the eighth highest House recipient of pro-Israel PAC donations in the current cycle. His $10,578 brings his career total to $71,578.

One reason for the frantic AIPAC effort to re-elect him this year is the fact that his young and attractive Republican opponent, businesswoman Leslie Touma, a former U.S. government and state of Michigan official with obvious leadership potential, has an Arab-American father and would be a strong addition to the tiny Arab-American caucus in the House of Representatives.

For readers who may be confused at this point, Sander Levin is the brother of veteran Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, long-time darling of the Israel lobby, who has a career total of $563,358 in pro-Israel PAC donations, and who has received $5,000 this year even though he is not up for re-election in the current cycle.

Michigan is emerging as a paradigm for the future in major American metropolitan areas. Because the combined Arab-American and Muslim-American communities, which are concentrated in the Detroit area, outnumber Jewish voters throughout the state, the well-heeled Michigan Jewish community and pro-Israel PACs from other states are combining to throw large amounts of money into the campaigns of pro-Israel Michigan politicians in order to keep as many supporters in Congress as possible.

As the Muslim-American community, which has been politically quiescent prior to the mid-1990s, becomes better informed and more active, however, this is becoming increasingly difficult for the Israel lobby to manage on a national scale. If the trend continues, it has the potential to right the long-standing and extremely harmful imbalance in U.S. Middle East policy not gradually, but very rapidly, perhaps in only two or three more election cycles. Despite the low financial participation by Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the current cycle to date, a high voter turnout from those communities in the November 1998 election could signal the beginning of this long-overdue trend.