Last week I ran posts saying that the late Stephen Solarz was a fool for the Israel lobby and yesterday MJ Rosenberg responded, saying that his friend Solarz was a good guy who took pro-Palestinian stances when he was able and actually disdained the power of the lobby.
That in turn drew a response from a friend, saying in essence, Solarz loved the lobby when his political survival depended on it. “Solarz actually stood with Carter in ’80 (over Kennedy), which is definitely worth something. But on the Gulf War, here’s what he said when the Clinton campaign sent him down to Florida to destroy rival Paul Tsongas in March ’92:”
”At a moment when potentially the fate of Israel hung in the balance, Clinton was prepared to use force. Tsongas was not.”
– from an Adam Nagourney story (“Tsongas campaign bogs down”) in USA Today, 3/9/92
And Solarz owed his survival in Congress to the lobby. When Solarz’s district was due to be targeted in the ’82 round of redistricting, he traveled the country raising pro-Israel money and building one of the largest warchests in all of Congress.
The idea was to fortify himself if his district got merged with Schumer’s, as everyone expected. Schumer turned to Wall Street for his money. In the end, Solarz and Schumer had so much money each that they were both left alone.
Here’s an NYT story from 1/82 that pretty much tells you all you need to know about Solarz/Israel money:
Representative Stephen J. Solarz was in Cleveland the other day delivering a fervent address on the security and survival of Israel. As he drew to a close, Mr. Solarz, who speaks in a manner that is both confident and affable, came to the matter closest to his heart and the real reason he had flown more than 1,000 miles for a two-hour visit. ”Like the Israelis, I have an interest in defensible borders,” he said. ”I am also concerned about the security and survival of myself.”
A three-term Democratic Congressman who has always won his Brooklyn district with ease, Mr. Solarz, 41 years old, is concerned about what the impending reapportionment by the State Legislature could do to his seat. In preparation for the possibility that he may to have run in a primary against another Democratic incumbent, or that he may end up with as many as 180,000 new constituents, Mr. Solarz has been busy raising money.
The organizers of the Cleveland lunch – a small affair of 30 persons whose host was Ted Bonda, the owner of the Cleveland Indians – hoped to raise $10,000. Mr. Bonda knows Mr. Solarz from their memberships on the Board of Trustees of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. Mr. Solarz, who has been able to use his position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and his prominence in Jewish organizations as mechanisms for raising funds around the country, is preparing for a potential primary fight costing at least $600,000. Raising money has been a major occupation for Mr. Solarz during the current Congressional recess, and in the last year he has been in San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and Detroit on fund-raising forays. He said that this month’s financial report to the Federal Election Commission will show that he raised $475,000 by the end of December.
The Congressman gave his out-of-town audience, many of whom were affiliated with the Cleveland Jewish Community Federation, one reasonfor contributing toward his political longevity.
”If I win in 1982 I should be in pretty good political shape,” he said. ”I will be in a position to become chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.”
The story of Solarz saving himself in ’82 by raising pro-Israel money could be a great satirical movie. The story is told wonderfully here by Steve Kornacki at Capital New York. Sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, and this story is all about the importance of Jewish money to the Democratic Party’s operation.
When the figures from the ’80 census were tallied, New York was assigned to lose five House seats, a reduction from 39 to 34, with leaders from both parties in Albany empowered (through a commission they chose) to redraw the lines. The basic parameters were clear from the outset: Each party would give up two seats (with incumbents pitted against each other in primaries, if necessary), with a “fair fight” between a Democratic and Republican incumbent in a fifth district.
As a freshman from overrepresented Brooklyn, Schumer was an obvious target, and with his district abutting Solarz’s, it was only natural to merge the two. Thus, his victory in 1980 set off a political and financial arms race like New York had never seen. Solarz, who had taken to traveling the country and the globe through his Foreign Affairs work, used his influential post to cultivate elite national donors, with a particular emphasis on pro-Israel money.
In 1981 alone, he held fund-raisers in Cleveland, San Francisco, Detroit and Los Angeles, among other cities, raking in nearly $500,000—then a whopping sum for a House man. “As Albert Camus once wrote, ‘Nothing so wonderfully concentrates a man’s mind as the imminent thought of execution,’” he told a New York Times reporter at the time.
But Schumer defied his freshman status and kept pace. After winning a spot on the Banking Committee, he set about making friends on Wall Street, tapping the city’s top law firms and securities houses for campaign donations. “I told them I looked like I had a very difficult reapportionment fight. If I were to stand a chance of being re-elected, I needed some help,” he would later tell the Associated Press.
By the spring of 1982, the largest bankroll in the entire House belonged to Solarz, with nearly $700,000. The third-largest belonged to Schumer, with nearly $500,000. The strength each man demonstrated was enough to scare party leaders in Brooklyn and Albany into keeping them apart in redistricting. When the new maps were finally drawn in June ’82, Democrats served up Jonathan Bingham (who declined to run against fellow incumbent Mario Biaggi in the newly configured 19th District) and the eccentric Frederick Richmond (thrown into a new majority-minority 11th District, where Major Owens ultimately won the seat) and left Leo Zeferetti to fend for himself (and lose) against Republican Guy Molinari. Schumer and Solarz were left alone, free to grow in the House for another decade if they wanted.
When the process ended, Schumer invited Solarz to lunch. “We talked about friendship,” he said afterward. “Everything’s all right now.”
