August/September 1992, Page 27, 28

Election Watch

Israel Lobby Ecstatic Over Gore Selection

By Lucille Barnes

"In eight years as a member of the House (1977 to 1985) and seven years in the Senate, Gore has compiled one of the strongest pro-Israel records on the Hill. He has a 100 percent record on foreign aid. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he has been a champion of U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation.

-Douglas Bloomfield, Washington Jewish Week, July 16, 1992

After the public positions taken by Gov. William Clinton against linking U.S. aid to Israel to Israel's support for the U.S.-backed peace process, lobbyists for Israel must have thought it couldn't get any better. It did, however, when Clinton chose Sen. Albert Gore as his running mate on the 1992 Democratic presidential ticket.

The Tennessee senator has close ties to pro-Israel groups in his home state. He made his first visit to Israel in 1986 on a trip sponsored by B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League.

"It's a great choice for the party and the country," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), one of the most active friends of Israel in the Senate. "He'll be a big plus," said Lewis Roth, spokesman for the National Jewish Democratic Council, a new spinoff by AIPAC-affiliated leaders. "He's very pro-Israel and has a terrific record with the community."

"He makes a very strong candidate," said American Jewish Congress president Robert Lifton. "He's very, very supportive of the U.S.-Israeli relationship."

Said Executive Director Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, "He's been a long-time friend of the community. . . He's got the president on the defensive as far as the Jewish community is concerned."

Clinton's Advisers From AIPAC

"There were many indications, said Jewish observers, that the convention had the strongest Jewish influence of any in recent memory. Jews, who have traditionally played a major role in the Democratic Party, were a highly visible part of the convention that nominated Gov. Bill Clinton as its presidential candidate and adopted a pro-Israel plan as part of its campaign platform."

-Journalist Steve Lipman, The Jewish Week, Queens, NY July 17, 1992

Clinton's all-out support of Israel and his selection of Gore is not a matter of chance. Hardly a day passes without the name of another leading pro-Israel activist surfacing from Clinton's campaign inner circle. Top adviser David Ifshin is general counsel to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's Washington lobby.

Mickey Kantor, who took over Ifshin's campaign chairman duties as the Clinton staff grew, has been active in Los Angeles fund-raising for Israeli causes and pro-Israel candidates.

The Washington Post revealed that Clinton's finance chairman, whose father is an Israeli, had been involved in an AIPAC-coordinated campaign to bring in outside funds and student volunteers to defeat U.S. Congressman Paul Findley in Illinois in 1982. Findley's defeat was one of AIPAC's first successful "hits" on congressmembers who ignore the Israel lobby line. Other reports revealed that Clinton's media adviser was born in Israel.

Sarah Ehrman, national Jewish coordinator of the Clinton campaign, is a family friend in whose Washington, DC apartment Hillary Clinton stayed while working as an attorney during the Watergate hearings. Ehrman, who drove Hillary to the Clintons' wedding in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1974, also has been an employee in AIPAC's Washington headquarters for the past 12 years. She left AIPAC last month to join the Clinton staff in Little Rock.

"Clinton is likely to get the highest percentage of any Jewish vote since Hubert Humphrey" in 1968, National Jewish Democratic Council Vice Chairman Stuart Eizenstat, former domestic policy adviser to President Jimmy Carter, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Given AIPAC's praetorian guard around Clinton, the statement should come as no surprise. However, the actual number of Jewish voters in the United States may disappoint Clinton's non-Jewish backers who realize what a price in pandering he is paying.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that Jews represent 2.4 percent of the nation's overall population of just over 250 million. Other estimates put the percentage at 1.9. Either way, many young American Jews seem turned off by the tactics of national Jewish organizations, which show little zeal for anything other than exporting U.S. taxpayer dollars to Israel.

According to projections from a recent survey of potential Jewish voters conducted by demographer Steven M. Cohen for the Synagogue Council of America, of the estimated 4.3 million American Jews of voting age, 870,000, most of them under 35, are not registered to vote at all.

As every political pro knows, but none will say out loud, the nationwide clout of America's pro-Israel community comes not primarily from votes but from the funding it can muster for candidates and the support it can generate in the media. George Bush has been on the receiving end of an extremely hostile mainstream media campaign ever since Sept. 12, 1991, the day he defied the more than 1,000 supporters brought in by AIPAC to lobby on Capitol Hill for unconditional loan guarantees to Israel.

The Perot Factor

"The Jewish vote had been considered pivotal in a three-way contest, while in the newly configured two-way race it may decline in importance."

-Cynthia Mann, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 23, 1992

Spin doctors from both parties said the withdrawal of H. Ross Perot from the presidential campaign was a boon to their candidate. Republican candidate George Bush's worst nightmare was a three-way impasse that would throw the decision into a Democratic House of Representatives. That fear is removed, and some states in the South and West, where Perot had much of his support, again look like potential Bush territory. This might strengthen those in the Bush camp who do not wish to capitulate on unconditional loan guarantees to Israel.

On the other hand, the first polls of Perot supporters, after their candidate's withdrawal from the race on the last day of the Democratic convention in New York, showed more of them moving to Clinton than to Bush.

Although one of Perot's two long-term business associates and principal campaign organizers was Jewish and a generous supporter of Israeli and other charities, Jews moved to Perot in much lower percentages than did other segments of the population.

Explained director Earl Raab of Brandeis University's Nathan Perlmutter Institute for Jewish Advocacy in the Detroit Jewish News of July 3, in an article written before Perot's withdrawal: "The real thing we have to worry about in the campaigning months ahead is not whether Jewish candidates are elected, but whether we are seeing a falling apart of the political system that has enabled candidates to flourish and Jewish issues to be advanced. And this year that concern is spelled P-E-R-O-T."

Jewish Republicans: A Minority Within a Minority

"President Bush may not be a beloved figure in the Jewish community right now, but that's not stopping his supporters from planning an active effort to win Jews over to the GOP cause in November."

-Columnist James David Besser in The Jewish Week, Queens, NY, June 19, 1992

Former National Jewish Coalition deputy director A. Mark Neuman is Republican Campaign Committee coordinator for strategic planning, overseeing outreach to special voter groups, including Jews. He points to the destruction of Saddam Hussain's military machine and the start of serious Middle East peace negotiations as examples of how Bush administration policies have increased Israeli security.

He has powerful backing in the person of Detroit industrialist Max Fischer, a former chairman of the Jewish Agency, who is honorary chairman of the Bush campaign's national finance committee. Although this is a year when many pro-Israel activists predict Clinton will get up to 90 percent of the Jewish vote, instead of the usual 70 percent Democrat-30 percent Republican split, there is evidence that American Jews gradually are moving away from their traditional overwhelming affiliation with the Democratic party.

The Chaotic Congressional Races

In both the Senate and the House, retirements have been high, and redistricting and late primaries make it difficult to pinpoint races where pro-Israel activists are in trouble, and where financial help to their opponents could make a difference. In the October issue of the Washington Report, however, a new chart of pro-Israel PAC donations to every candidate for Congress through June 30, 1992 will help readers define which candidates are receiving heavy AIPAC-orchestrated support, meaning their opponents have a good chance of winning if they can generate similar financial and voter support.

Lucille Barnes covers Washington for U.S. and overseas publications.

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