Unholy
Alliance
is as suspicious as the pro-Israel enthus-
iasm of the New Right is to other Jews.)
Malcolm Hoenlein, the very influential
head of the Jewish Community Relations
Council of New York, says, "I know a
number of candidates who sounded out
Jewish leaders, including traditional
liberals. . . . The Jewish community was a
very significant factor in their decision not
to take D'Amato on."
Consumer activist Mark Green, the
front-runner for the Democratic nomina-
tion almost by default, is widely dis-
counted by insiders, partly because he is
considered too liberal, partly because he
starts with a few hundred thousand dol-
lars while D'Amato begins with over five
million dollars. Green, who is Jewish, says,
"Jews prosper most in a society based on
pluralism, and on tolerance of what Frank-
furter called 'despised minorities.' Jews
have a special set of values and a special
tradition. D'Amato may back Israel, but
he's at war with that tradition. When I say
this to many Jewish leaders, they avert
their eyes and shuffle their feet."
Conservative Republican Robert Kasten
of Wisconsin shares top billing with
D'Amato as a must-reelect for AIPAC and
most of the pro-Israel PACs. Kasten not
only votes in favor of Israel, but he chairs
the important appropriations subcommit-
tee on foreign aid. Kasten is given substan-
tial credit for carrying the bill that shifted
Israel aid from loans to outright grants,
a bill that will do more for Israel than
every nickel raised by the United Jewish
Appeal. One possible Democratic con-
tender, Herbert Kohl, a Milwaukee busi-
nessman, took soundings similar to
Levitt's, and received a similar message:
stay out. So did several others.
The current Democratic front-runner is
Edward Garvey, formerly executive direc-
tor of the National Football League
Players Association. Last October, at a
Democratic Party reception, Garvey was
rebuffed when he tried to meet Morris
Amitay, the former director of AIPAC and
the current director of WashPAC, one of
the largest pro-Israel PACs. Amitay's
newsletter had described Wisconsin as a
priority race, and Garvey as "not good on
our issues." Asked what evidence he had
for this assessment, Amitay explained to
an incredulous Garvey aide that the Foot-
ball Players Association had failed to op-
pose the sale of AWACS planes to Saudi
Arabia!
Unlike the New York contest, the
Wisconsin campaign is expected to be a
horse race. Kasten was arrested last
winter for drunk driving, and the polls
show him with very high negatives. Even-
tually WashPAC's newsletter conceded
that Garvey had put out "a good position
paper on our issues." Although the
Wisconsin Jewish community is split bet-
ween Garvey and Kasten, virtually every
penny of out-of-state Israel-PAC support
has gone to Kasten, with the exception of
two "multi-issue" Jewish PACs, about
which more in a moment. Garvey adds:
"Kasten has co-sponsored a bill to cut the
interest rate on Israel's debt to the U.S.
from 13 percent to seven percent. We have
farmers going bankrupt in my state.
Nobody is offering to cut their interest
rate to seven percent. It looks to me like
Kasten is playing with dynamite."
A . . . concern is the growing
alliance between some
mainstream Jewish groups and
the evangelical New Right, also
based largely on a common
support of Israel.
he Florida race, also a toss-up, sug-
gests a quite different formula. There,
Republican incumbent Paula Hawkins,
another right-winger who supports Israel,
will get the lion's share of out-of-state
Israel-PAC money; but her Democratic
challenger, Governor Bob Graham, a man
with long-standing ties to Florida's Jewish
community, will get substantial other
Jewish support, both nationally and local-
ly. "We will help Paula, but nine-tenths of
our Florida members will give to
Graham," concedes the director of a
Jewish PAC. "They're both fine. It',s a no-
lose proposition." To an extent, this pat-
tern holds in other states: Israel PACs
support the progsrael incumbent; Jews, as
individuals, support whom they please.
But as the Israel PACs become a more
dominant influence on Jewish giving and
as Republican Senate control continues, it
remains to be seen whether the future
portends more races like Florida's where
Jews give to both sides, or more elections
like the ones in Wisconsin and New York,
where the Israel PACs throw much of the
weight of the Jewish community behind
the right-wing incumbent.
In fairness, the Israel PACs went all out
to defeat Jesse Helms in 1984 and are now
oing all out for such longtime Democratic
a
16
Friday, August 8, 1986
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
allies as Jim Jones of Oklahoma, Daniel
Inouye of Hawaii, Chris Dodd of Connec-
ticut, and Alan Cranston of California, as
well as Republican moderates Bob Pack-
wood and Bob Dole. However, in the lat-
ter two cases, the early support by the
Israel PACs for the incumbents had
substantial influence in persuading two
potential Democratic challengers, both
Jewish, to forgo the race. Sources close to
Democratic congressmen Dan Glickman of
Kansas and Ron Wyden of Oregon in-
dicate that both men were told that little
if any Jewish PAC money would be avail-
able to them, should they challenge Dole,
or Packwood.
The tilt toward Republican incumbents
became vivid this year, partly because the
large New Right freshman class of 1980 is
up for reelection. Many Jewish PAC
leaders feel they have educated these
legislators, and now have a substantial
personal and political stake in their future.
However, 1986 is no anomaly. The par-
tisan tilt and the affiance with right-
wingers is likely to intensify the longer
Republicans control the Senate. At pres-
ent, only four Republican incumbents are
unacceptable to the pro-Israel community
— Helms, Steven Symms, Jeremiah Den-
ton (the three most right-wing members of
the Senate), and James Abdnor (who is of
Arab descent) — and all are trying to make
amends. If Republicans keep control of the
Senate, and the new crop of GOP freshmen
follows the formula; fewer and fewer right-
wing incumbents may ever face Democra-
tic challengers who can expect the kind of
help from Jewish PACs that such people
used to get. That prospect certainly isn't
good for the Democrats. But is it good
even for the Jews?
T
hat question has been the subject
of an intense debate during recent
months within leading Jewish organiza-
tions and in the Jewish press. After the
1984 election a number of prominent
Jewish leaders, including Ted Mann of the
American Jewish Congress, Hyman Book-
binder of the American Jewish Committee,
and Rabbi David Saperstein of the Union
of American Hebrew Congregations, de-
cided to challenge the single-issue PACs
head-on. They organized MIPAC, which
stands for Multi-Issue PAC. MIPAC
argues that support for Israel should be
a "threshold" issue — necessary to qualify
for Jewish backing, but not sufficient.
Before 1984 only one other Jewish PAC
took this approach: the Joint Action Com-
mittee, or JAC, an organization of several