THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Friday, November 1, 1985

$ PAC S $

National PAC's Richard Altman: A salary of
$100,000, a goal of 100,000 members.

Hope and Joan Rivers, clothing designer
Ralph Lauren, publishers Morton B.
Zuckerman of The Atlantic Monthly
and Michael Korda of Simon and
Schuster, and chairman of the New
York Stock Exchange, Arthur Levitt
Jr.
National PAC's Allocations Commit-
tee — the people who decide which can-
didates should get the PAC's money —
is as blue chip as are the people who con-
tribute to it. Now on the committee are
such people as Martin Peretz, publisher
of The New Republic; George Klein,
New York real estate developer; and
Richard Ravitch, former head of New
York's Metropolitan Transit Authority.
The committee is chaired by National
PAC founder, Marvin Josephson.
By the end of its first year, National
PAC had contributed over $542,000 to
congressional races. Last year, it gave
campaigns almost $750,000. After 31
months in business, National PAC was
the largest pro-Israel PAC in the U.S.
and the 19th largest of all the political
action committees in the nation.
National PAC's prominence has been
one of the chief factors in Jewish PACs
coming out of the closet. While few peo,
ple complain about the prestige and the
clout that National PAC has given Jews
in national politics — and especially on
Capitol Hill — some are wary of the
organization's economics. As the high
roller among pro-Israel PACs, Washing-
ton PAC is also the high spender. Na-
tional PAC executive director Richard
Altman receives $100,000 yearly. Asso-

ciate Director Ira Forman receives
$75,000. When the fledgling organiza-
tion was looking for a chief in late 1982
and the first half of 1983, it paid a Los
Angeles personnel firm, Korn/Ferry In-
ternational, over $38,000 for its ser-
vices. Bills from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind,
Wharton and Garrison, one of the most
prestigious — and most expensive —
law firms in the country totalled more
than $21,000 just in the second quarter
of 1983.
In 1983-84, National PAC raised over
$2,1 million — nearly 40 percent of all
money raised by Jewish PACs. But only
one out of every three dollars raised by
National PAC went to campaign coffers.
The rest — over $1.4 million — went to
overhead, salaries and fund-raising
efforts.
"Our administrative expenses are in
line with other PACs," said National
PAC director Richard Altman. (Other
large, national PACs have similar ratios
between funds raised and contributions
dispersed. Realtors PAC, for instance,
the largest PAC in the country, gave
away slightly more than half the $4.3
million it raised last year. And the
American Medical Asociation PAC gave
away under . half of the $4 million it
raised.)
To meet its goal of almost tripling its
membership from its current 35,000 to
100,000, said Altman, National PAC
must now incur such costly membership
building strategies as direct mail cam-
paigns. These expenses will decrease as
the membership goal is neared, he said.
JACPAC and Washington PAC, the
second and third largest Jewish political
action committees, are misers compared
to National PAC.But then neither has
the type of professional staff that Na-
tional PAC does nor similar member-
ship goals.
JACPAC, or the Joint Action Com-
mittee for Political Affairs, is probably
the most grass roots-oriented of the
three major Jewish PACs. Its 15,000
members — all women — were organiz-
ed through coffee klatches around the
country. But, as one close observer of
JACPAC said, "These are not just
housewives who decided to get involv-
ed in politics. These are integrated peo-
ple in every way — culturally, political-
ly, religiously. And they are very, very
sophisticated. With such women as the
wives of (AIPAC director) Tom Dine
and (former advisor to President Carter)
Stu Eizenstat participating, you know
they're the cream of the crop."
During 1983-84, JACPAC gave over
$260,000 to 118 candidates. The organ-
ization, based in the Chicago suburb of
Highland Park, refuses to contribute to
candidates who also accept funds from
the Radical Right. (JACPAC's officers
also refuse to speak to reporters.)

One indication of JACPAC's political
savvy is that in addition to pumping the
legal maximum contribution — $10,000
— to Paul Simon's campaign against
Illinois Sen. Charles Percy, it also gave
$3,000 to the Federal Account, a Demo-
cratic Party-affiliated effort to register
inner city residents in Illinois, the type
of voters who would vote against Percy.
The third largest pro-Israel .political
action committee, Washington PAC
was founded in late 1980 by Morris
Amitay when he left the helm of the
American Israel Public Affairs Commit-
tee (AIPAC). "I thought I could run the
PAC as a sidelight" to my law practice,
said Amitay, who receives $500 month-
ly from Washington PAC for adminis-
trative expenses. Washington PAC's
600 members, he said, each contribute
an average of $250. Anyone who contri-
butes $1,000 or more is invited to join
Washington PAC's advisory board,
although Amitay ultimately decides
which candidates receive campaign
funds. "That saves a lot of problems,"
he said.
Over 90 percent of the $237,673
Washington PAC raised last year went
to 176 candidates. The PAC is so effi-
cient that the Federal Election Commis-
sion recently questioned its low
overhead.
Of the three leading pro-Israel PACs,
National PAC is the least bipartisan:
Sixty-eight percent of its campaign con-
tributions went to Democrats,- 32 per-
cent to Republicans. This compares to
JACPAC's and Washington PAC's con-
tributions, respectively, of 80 and 91
percent to Democrats and 20 and nine
percent to Republicans.
The three major PACs — each with
a national membership and an emphasis
on congressional races around the coun-
try — denied that they are in competi-
tion with each other. "If you are a
member of a local PAC and you want
to maximize your influence around the
country," said Richard Altman, "you
give to National PAC. If you have, say,
only $35.00 and you want to identify
with your local community, you give to
your local PAC."
But a resident of Minneapolis who is
starting a PAC in his city disagreed on
these priorities. "A national PAC is
useful for those people who don't have
access to a local PAC," he said. "But I
would rather have dozens and dozens of
PACs spring up around the country
than rely on a few large ones, especial-
ly if the giant Jewish PACs are based
in Washington. I would rather have 50
people from 50 PACs visit congressmen
and sing the same tune a bit different-
ly than have them receive visits from
the representatives of one or two PACs
who tell them essentially the same thing
in essentially the same way. ' ' — A.J.M.

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