Power Game

by Hedrick Smith

This outcome was a measure of how dramatically the climate had shifted since the 1981 AWACS deal. It pointed up stunning changes in the Middle East. In the intervening five years, Congress had become deeply disillusioned with the peace process. With the TWA airliner hijacking, the Achille Lauro hijacking, and European airport bombings, Congress and the country were obsessed with Arab terrorism. Some Senators and House members put blame on Saudi Arabia, for they suspected the Saudis of bankrolling Palestinian and Syrian-backed terrorism. Moreover, the Saudi “oil weapon” had lost its sting with the steep drop in oil prices from thirty-six dollars a barrel in 1981 to fifteen dollars a barrel in 1986. Finally, Prime Minister Shimon Peres was a much smoother salesman for Israel than Menachem Begin had been.

  AIPAC Organizing the Sunbelt

  But AIPAC was not merely riding a favorable tide; it had undergone a transformation. It was not only capable of blocking major Arab arms deals, but it had promoted a quantum jump in aid to the ailing Israeli economy, from $2.1 billion in 1980, mostly loans, to $3.8 billion in 1986, all outright grants.

  AIPAC was not omnipotent, of course. In early 1986, for example, its leaders contemplated trying to block actual delivery of the AWACS planes approved in 1981; they found that politically impossible. But AIPAC’s increased political leverage was undeniable. It had adapted to the new power game: to the dispersal of power in Congress, to the increasing importance of grass-roots lobbying, to the conservative mood of the country, and to six years of Republican control of the Senate. Those changes, coupled with migration of voters from the Snowbelt to the Sunbelt, dictated a new, nationally oriented AIPAC strategy. The old cozy relationships no longer sufficed.

  “In the old days,” Tom Dine recalled, “Sy Kenen [who founded AIPAC] used to work with a couple of recognized leaders—Hubert Humphrey on the Democratic side and Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania on the Republican side. At the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War [in 1967], we drafted a resolution for Sy to take to Humphrey and Scott, and that’s all he had to do. You couldn’t do that today. You initiate an idea. You go to somebody to hopefully persuade them of it. I don’t care if he’s got a title, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, minority leader, majority leader, he has to sell it to everybody else. There are now 535 potential secretaries of State.”6

  That power dispersion has forced AIPAC to spread its power base. For two decades, it banked on the political and financial muscle of large Jewish communities in the big states: New York, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, Massachusetts. What the 1981 AWACS vote drove home was the weakness of the pro-Israel lobby in twenty-five states of the Southeast, Southwest, Prairie, and Rocky Mountain regions, especially among conservative Republicans.

  “Where were we outlobbied by the administration in ’81, and why?” Dine asked aloud, his brown eyes intent. “We were thin. You can’t win with just the big-state senators. We have worked on the premise that votes are won or lost at the grass roots. We have to go not where the Jews are, but where the votes are.”

  At first glance, Dine seems an odd choice to revamp a traditionally Democratic lobby in a conservative Republican era. He is a tall foreign-policy intellectual in his mid-forties who would be at home teaching political science. All his political mentors were liberal Democrats. As a scared twenty-six-year-old, he was the congressional liaison for the Peace Corps in the Johnson administration, then went to India as special assistant to Ambassador Chester Bowles. He returned in 1969 to work five years for Senator Frank Church, then under Senator Edmund Muskie on the budget committee, and finally as a defense issues specialist for Ted Kennedy’s abortive 1980 presidential campaign. After the 1981 AWACS defeat, some conservative Senate Republicans urged AIPAC board members to put a Republican superior over Dine and more Republicans on AIPAC’s board. The board was broadened, but Dine was kept in charge.

  What fit Dine for the task of reorienting AIPAC’s strategy was his new creed of lobbying and his instinct for grass-roots work. Two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines had given Dine a zest for community action. That was his prescription for the pro-Israel lobby: Spread the power base. Go to the grass roots. Get involved in the political process.

  Some Jewish migration to the Sunbelt helped. As Doug Bloomfield, AIPAC’s legislative director, put it, Jewish leaders feared that “as Jews go from the Rust Belt to the Sunbelt, they would leave their Jewishness in New York because it was easy to be a Jew there.” Instead, Bloomfield said AIPAC found that under-forty “jumpies” (Jewish upwardly mobile professionals) “are taking their political activism with them into the Sunbelt. I found in Sarasota, Florida, there were two Jewish communities. There’s one over fifty, and they have a synagogue there and a Jewish community. Along comes the under-forty generation. They’re not intimidated. They’re a much more self-confident generation. They start Jewish PACs and community-relations councils and day schools and country clubs. There’s no fear that, Gosh, if people know I’m Jewish, it’s going to hurt business, or I won’t get a job.”7

  Dine and Bloomfield followed the migration to the Southwest. In 1983, AIPAC opened its first regional office in Austin, Texas; later it opened three others. From Austin—the cornerstone of Dine’s strategy—AIPAC covered six states: Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona (where AIPAC had always done poorly). In 1981, only four of the twelve senators from these six states opposed the AWACS sale and only about one third of the region’s fifty-three House members had a record of voting for aid to Israel. AI PACs objective was to change this record by activating grass-roots organizing in local Jewish communities, running political workshops, and getting local leaders to make personal contact with senators and congressmen.

  In Seminole, Oklahoma, Dine located six Jews who had grown up with Senator David Boren. Dine flew to Seminole and had lunch with them, urging all six, now successful businessmen, to get back in touch with Boren. Exposed to a pro-Israel message, Boren moved from opposing AIPAC in 1981 to voting with it four years later. In rural northeast Texas, AIPAC found three local Jews who knew Congressman Sam Hall. At AIPAC’s urging, they met with him and asked why he had always opposed foreign aid, including aid to Israel. “You never asked me to vote for it,” Hall replied. “If we ask you, will you vote for it?” they inquired. “If it’s important to you, sure,” Hall said. He voted for foreign aid for the first time in 1984.

  These patient, piecemeal efforts by AIPAC, Dine said, produced a “sea change” in that six-state region. By 1985, nine of its twelve senators lined up with AIPAC against the Jordan arms sale and seven against the new Saudi sale. Support for aid to Israel in the House doubled.

  AIPAC has not done as well in the Rocky Mountain and Prairie regions, or in the Southeast, but it is making headway in selected states, such as Virginia. It has even courted old foes such as Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. In 1984, it tried to defeat Helms and then, having failed, helped arrange for him to visit Jerusalem. Later, AIPAC officials claimed Helms had been “sensitized” by his travels, showing more understanding of Israel and occasionally voting with AIPAC.

  AIPAC’s political tactics have changed in other important ways. During six years of Senate domination by Republicans, AIPAC has become more bipartisan, helping incumbent Republicans. It has also backed non-Jewish incumbents against Jewish challengers. Both the bipartisan approach and the proincumbent bias reflect the new style of lobbying and have raised hackles among AIPAC’s traditional allies. Some Democratic politicians, accustomed to AIPAC’s previous pro-Democratic traditions, bristled at seeing increased support and campaign money from pro-Israel lobbies going to Republican incumbents. In 1982, for example, Missouri State Senator Harriet Woods, a liberal Democrat and a Jew, was challenging incumbent Republican Senator Jack Danforth. AIPAC advised the Jewish community to back Danforth, who had stood with AIPAC on the AWACS vote. “Years ago, you would automatically support one of the meshpucha, the family, meaning a Jew,” an AIPAC activist told me. “But j
ust because Harriet Woods is Jewish and Jack Danforth is not, doesn’t mean you support Harriet. This was an important test of the sophistication of the community. You stick with your friends, and it pays off.”

  In 1986, Dine discouraged Ron Wyden, a Jewish Democratic congressman with an excellent pro-Israeli voting record, from running against Republican Bob Packwood in Oregon. Dine argued that Packwood had a strong record as a friend of Israel, the Jewish community was already backing him to the hilt, and Wyden stood little chance of getting Jewish financial backing. Dine and Bob Asher, AIPAC’s president, who is a Republican, also discouraged Dan Glickman of Kansas, another Democratic congressman who is Jewish, from running against Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. AIPAC officials told me Glickman was angered, in part because Dole’s voting record was not as strongly pro-Israel as Glickman’s. But AIPAC’s reasoning was that Dole had been as friendly as he could be, in his leadership position, and AIPAC did not want to antagonize him when Glickman had little chance of winning. Some Democratic senators, bent on regaining control of the Senate in 1986, were also upset over AIPAC’s warm political endorsements of the pro-Israel records of Republican conservatives such as Alfonse D’Amato in New York and Robert Kasten in Wisconsin. AIPAC discouraged more than one prominent New York Democrat from opposing D’Amato. As Bob Asher explained, AIPAC’s position is to “stick with friends who have been up-front and out-front for Israel.” With more incumbent Republican senators running in 1986 than in twenty-five years, AIPAC was inevitably more in the Republican column than before, Asher said.8

  AIPAC also reflects the new lobbying trends in the way it plays the political money game. Its officers make a point that AIPAC is not a political action committee but a public-affairs committee that does not make campaign contributions. But many leaders in the “Jewish community” as politically active American Jews refer to themselves, talk freely of the political guidance AIPAC provides to more than eighty pro-Israel PACs set up by Jewish organizations or community groups to raise and funnel campaign funds to friendly candidates. Most pro-Israeli PACs have innocuous names like National PAC, Joint Action Committee, Florida Congressional Committee, Hudson Valley PAC or St. Louisans for Better Government. Those pro-Israel PACs donated roughly $4 million to candidates in 1986, according to Federal Election Commission Records.9

  AIPAC keeps close tally on every congressional vote and provides the pro-Israeli PACs with thumbs-up or thumbs-down on Senators or House members. AIPAC follows one determining issue—American policy toward Israel and issues that affect Israel’s interest—and it cares little about other issues of concern to Jews. But on that one touchstone, AIPAC rewards friends and goes after adversaries. AI PACs guidance is reinforced by interlocking leadership in the pro-Israel groups; many of its leaders and activists are founders and leaders of the pro-Israel PACs. For example, Morris Amitay, who was AIPAC’s executive director from 1974 to 1980 and who still sits on AI PACs executive committee, is treasurer of the second largest pro-Israel PAC, the Washington Political Action Committee, and puts out a newsletter describing various senators as “down-the-line supporters” of Israel and others, such as Daniel J. Evans of Washington as “the most negative member of the Foreign Relations Committee.”

  One sign of AIPAC’s increased leverage has been its ability to punish adversaries. In 1982, its prime candidate for reprisal was Representative Paul Findlay, a ten-term Republican from Illinois. AIPAC attacked Findlay as a friend of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat. According to Dine, Jews donated ninety percent of the campaign funds raised by Richard Durbin, the Democrat who beat Findlay. In 1984, more than forty percent of the $3.2 million contributed by Jewish PACs to Senate races went to Democratic opponents of five Republicans who voted for the AWACS sale. One of its top targets was Senator Roger Jepsen of Iowa—“J for Judas,” one AIPAC official sneered.

  AIPAC officials make no secret that AIPAC’s prime target in 1984 was Charles Percy of Illinois, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whom AIPAC had tabbed as the most influential pro-Arab member of Congress. Jewish PAC’s gave $274,144 to Paul Simon, Percy’s ultimately victorious Democratic opponent. In addition, Michael Goland, a Jewish businessman from California, spent more than $1 million in negative advertising against Percy. In a lawsuit, Percy charged that Goland was operating with guidance from former AIPAC executive director Morris Amitay. But Goland, AIPAC, Amitay, and Simon’s campaign all contended that Goland was operating independently.

  Even so, Tom Dine claimed after the election that Jewish efforts and money had beaten Percy and helped tip other races. “Like an Indian elephant, we don’t forget,” Dine boasted to a Jewish audience in Toronto. Both Percy and Jepsen lost close races that were affected by many factors; but unquestionably strong Jewish opposition hurt them. In 1986, another AIPAC executive told me that the “Percy factor” and the “Jepsen factor”—that is, memories of AIPAC’s opposition to them in 1984—had swayed senators against the Jordan and Saudi arms sales, especially among Republicans facing reelection in 1986. Speaking to the Council of Jewish Federations in Chicago in November, 1986, Tom Dine rated the newly elected Senate as more supportive than the former Senate (he said eight of thirteen newly elected senators were more friendly to Israel than their predecessors). More to the point, Dine urged the Jewish community to remember the “friends” of Israel running for reelection in 1988—and he mentioned eighteen of them by name.

  Sometimes, the political arm-twisting goes too far and backfires. When the Saudi arms sale came to a Senate vote on May 6, 1986, Senator Rudy Boschwitz, one of AIPAC’s leading allies, called two Republicans, Phil Gramm of Texas and Daniel Evans of Washington, off the Senate floor during the vote to meet Michael Goland, who had put $1 million into defeating Percy. In that vote, the Saudi arms package still included Stinger antiaircraft missiles, and Goland suggested to Evans that the Saudis might let these get to Palestinian terrorists.

  As Evans recalled their encounter, Goland asked, “What would you think about someone using an ad that would start—” Goland described the ad very vividly: the senator raising his hand, voting aye on this arms sale, and then a picture of an Arab in a kaffiyeh headdress, assembling a Stinger, an airplane taking off, an explosion, crosses in a graveyard, and reading off a list of names. “So he had it well thought out,” Evans said, “or at least he had a picture of what might be done. And when he asked me, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I said, ‘Well, I think that it would be an inappropriate and outrageous way to campaign.’ But I said that I think that in my state, people are too smart to be taken in by something like that.”10

  Both Evans and Gramm voted for the Saudi sale despite Goland’s threat. Tom Dine told me that the incident had been a grave embarrassment because “it fits the stereotype of how the pro-Israel lobby really works.” Dine insisted that it had been done by Boschwitz on his own. “It’s a disaster,” Dine said. “The whole thing hurts. It’s everything that I disagree with. In no way were we involved with Goland. He was a lone ranger.”

  Whatever the case, plenty of senators and House members regard AIPAC’s political clout as awesome. Overall, AIPAC has gathered strength and gained muscle by adapting to the New Washington politics: the spread of power in Congress, the potency of grass-roots lobbying, the need to be bipartisan, and the importance of throwing financial support to friends and against enemies, and then advertising the results. That is the way the new lobbying game is played.

  Old-Breed Lobbying

  In the abstract, lobbying kindles an image of wickedness only barely less disreputable than the skullduggery of the Mafia. It conjures up Upton Sinclair’s exposés of the beef and sugar trusts or Thomas Nast’s oils of robber barons closeted in back rooms, their corpulent figures framed in thick black strokes against a backdrop in red. It has the illicit aroma of cigar smoke, booze, and money delivered in brown envelopes. Or it smacks of big labor muscling congressional minions. But that is a caricature, for lobbying has changed immensely
with the rise of mass citizen protests in the 1960s over civil rights and the Vietnam War. It changed further with the breakup of the old power baronies, the arrival of new-breed politicians, and the intrusion of campaign techniques.

  Of course, plenty of lobbyists still practice old-fashioned lobbying. At heart, the old-breed game is inside politics. That is why so many lobbyists are former members of Congress, former White House officials, former legislative staff aides, former cabinet officers. Their game thrives on the clubbiness of the old-boy network. It turns on the camaraderie of personal friendships, on expertise born of experience. It taps old loyalties and well-practiced access. It draws on the common bond of old battles and the certain knowledge that you may lose on this year’s tax bill, but you’ll be back to revise it next year, and that yesterday’s foe may be tomorrow’s ally. It depends on relationships for the long haul.

  The superlobbyists of the old-breed game are people such as Clark Clifford, a courtly, genteel former White House counsel to Harry Truman and secretary of Defense to Lyndon Johnson; Robert Strauss, the wisecracking former Democratic party chairman and Mr. Everything for Jimmy Carter; and Howard Baker, between stints as Senate majority leader and White House chief of staff. Close behind are Tommy Boggs, the able, likable, paunchy son of Representative Lindy Boggs and the late House Democratic Majority Leader Hale Boggs; Charls Walker, an astute, drawling Texas-born tax attorney with high Treasury experience in the Nixon years; and Robert Gray, secretary to the Eisenhower cabinet, who got to know the Reagans in California. These inside fixers cannot do what was possible a generation ago. Yet in a game where access and reputation are the coin of the marketplace, king rainmakers still have influence.

  For the essence of the old-breed game is retail lobbying: the one-on-one pitch. It is Bob Strauss’s note to Treasury Secretary Jim Baker to help a friend seek appointment to the World Bank. It is Howard Baker’s contact with an old Senate colleague to see that some client gets a break on the “transition rules” of a tax bill. It is Bob Gray’s phone call to the White House to ask the president to address some convention or to wangle an invitation to a state dinner for an industrial big shot. It is breakfast with a committee staff director who is drafting intricate legislation. It is little favors such as tickets to a Washington Redskins football game or helping Ed Meese’s wife get a job. It is knowing which buttons to push.