Click for Contents

P.O. Box 1805,Jerusalem 91017 Tel. 972-2-531-5440, Fax: 972-2-537-9489 Advertising Fax: 972-2-531-5425, Email Editorial: [email protected] Subscriptions: [email protected] Web site: http://www.jrep.com

Jewish World: Conduit to the Candidate
Ira Rifkin / Washington

Jay Footlik, liaison to the Jewish community and point man on Israel for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, is tasked with trying to stem the movement of Jews to the Republican camp.

Jay K. Footlik stops mid-conversation to answer his cellphone, and smiles broadly as he tells the caller how pleased he is by the way his boss has been dealing with what he calls "my issues."

Footlik�s boss is Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, who the previous day told a television interviewer that Israel had "every right in the world" to kill Hamas leader Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, that he supported Prime Minister Ariel Sharon�s Gaza pullout plan "completely," and that Palestinian insistence on a right of return that threatens Israel�s Jewish character has "always been a non-starter." No wonder Footlik, Kerry�s recently appointed senior adviser for Middle East and Jewish affairs, told his caller that on "my issues, I was very happy."

The same could be said after more recent Kerry comments on his "commitment to a secure Jewish state," delivered on Israel Independence Day and at an Anti-Defamation League Washington conference. Such comments, which Footlik is "heavily" involved in crafting, make his job that much easier.

As Kerry�s official liaison to American Jewish voters, Footlik�s bottom-line responsibility is to rally that community behind the Democratic ticket and slow a discernible movement of Jews toward the Republican camp. In 2000, President George Bush picked up about 19 percent of the Jewish vote, the largest percentage snagged by any Republican presidential candidate since 1988, when Bush Sr. won 35 percent. This year, even leading Jewish Democrats say George W.�s staunch support for a beleaguered Israel, coupled with his war on terror, is sure to earn him additional Jewish votes. Just how many is still anybody�s guess - which is where Footlik comes in.

"The situation in Israel and even its continued survival, the rise of anti-Semitism, terrorism; the impact in the community of these elements are important for [the Kerry campaign] to understand," Footlik says during an interview at Kerry�s downtown Washington headquarters. "Part of my role is to take back these community concerns to the candidate and staff."

Footlik would seem born to the job - or at least named for it: His middle name is Kerry. His mother, who raised him on her own in Skokie, a suburban Chicago Jewish enclave, tagged him with the name simply because she liked its sound. "Odd foresight on her part, I�d say," he quips.

At 38, Footlik is a well-connected Washington political operative. Before Joseph Lieberman dropped out of the Democratic primary campaign, Footlik was the Connecticut senator�s Jewish liaison. He served in a similar post in the Clinton administration. "My first trip to Israel was with the presidential party for the signing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty in 1994. That was very exciting for a Jewish kid who had never been there," says Footlik. His second trip came the following year, again with Bill Clinton, for Yitzhak Rabin�s funeral.

A man of medium height, stocky build and thinning hair, Footlik linked up with Clinton in Los Angeles, where he studied the Arab-Israeli conflict with UCLA Middle East scholar Steven Spiegel, who got Footlik excited about Israel and Jewish issues, and went to law school. The irst Clinton presidential campaign took him to Clinton/Gore headquarters in Arkansas and then to the 1992 Democratic convention in New York, where he managed the candidate�s "war room." When Clinton won, Footlik joined the White House team, eventually becoming the president�s official link to the Jewish community, one of several who served in that post during Clinton�s eight years in office. He left in 1997, but continued to take on special assignments connected to various Middle East initiatives and events.

"He did a perfectly fine job, but there were a million Jews working in the Clinton White House and every one of them was wired," says a Washington Jewish political pro. "Instead of everybody after access coming to him, people went to whoever they knew. Jay was sometimes left out."

After the White House, Footlik moved to Israel for some four years, living in Tel Aviv and doing fundraising and other consulting work for Ruder Finn, the public relations firm; the Peres Center for Peace; and Seeds of Peace, which brings together Arab and Israeli young people. He returned to the United States in 2002 to work for Lieberman, but not before meeting the woman

who would become his wife - Israeli documentary filmmaker Grace Mozes. They married in February, and the Brazilian-born Mozes is currently traveling the U.S. screening "Keep on Dancing," her film about young people coping with terrorism, to Jewish organizations and campus groups. "She�s sort of unofficial hasbarah for Israel," says Footlik, using the Hebrew word for "explanation" but also for "information" or "propaganda."

As Kerry�s Middle East adviser, Footlik recently set up a briefing for the candidate by Dennis Ross, the former peace process envoy; Sandy Berger, Clinton�s National Security Adviser; and Martin Indyk, ambassador to Israel under Clinton. Spiegel, former congressman Mel Levine and x-U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke are additional Kerry advisers.

Footlik also maintains unofficial lines of communication to Israeli officials. A Sharon-Kerry meeting, tentatively arranged for the prime minister�s late-May Washington visit to address AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, will have to be rescheduled after Sharon chose not to go to the United States. Footlik says Kerry hopes Sharon can formulate a new Gaza plan that has wider support.

Between Lieberman and Kerry, Footlik put in a stint working in Washington with RSLB Partners. The firm�s principals are Yuval Rabin, the late prime minister�s son; Shimon Sheves, who served as Rabin�s chief of staff; former army chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and Gil Birger, a former economics attach� at the Embassy of Israel in Washington. Footlik describes the firm as "involved in lobbying and business development" for foreign government agencies and private firms active in security issues. Clients include the Serbian defense ministry, the Bulgarian finance ministry, and the government of the Ivory Coast. "I headed up the lobbying division," says Footlik, who officially is on leave from RSLB for the campaign. "I added an American touch."

Unlike the Clinton administration, the Kerry campaign is, so far, relatively light on Jewish staffers. That gives Footlik a more central role this time around, though he is by no means the campaign�s sole address for all things Jewish. "In the Democratic party you can�t be the gatekeeper for the Jews," explains a long-time Washington Jewish Democratic activist. "There are just too many Jews involved in the party for that."

Cameron Kerry, the candidate�s younger brother who converted from Roman Catholicism to Judaism to marry a Jewish woman, served as the campaign�s unofficial Jewish liaison prior to Footlik�s arrival. Footlik says Cameron will continue "to be very much involved" in Jewish issues. Cameron, a 53-year-old Boston attorney whose law firm is deeply involved in the Israeli high-tech industry, is one of his brother�s closest advisers. As such, Cameron tells The Report, his responsibilities will range far beyond the Jewish portfolio. "I�ll continue to work with Jay, but he�s his own man," says Cameron.

The Republican political establishment has sought to portray Kerry as a flip-flopping opportunistic political latecomer to the pro-Israel cause. Kerry�s been attacked for allegedly criticizing construction of Israel�s security fence, which he says he supports, and that it was only some of the routing he questioned. Kerry�s also been criticized by Jewish Bush supporters for saying early on that former secretary of state James Baker and former president Jimmy Carter,

two men widely perceived by American Jews to have anti-Israel leanings, might make good Middle East envoys in a Kerry administration (a gaffe Kerry spokespeople now attribute to a "staffer�s mistake").

Jewish Democratic activists maintain that Kerry�s voting record on Israel-related issues has been "perfect" throughout his 18 years in the Senate, and what they call Republican spin is meant to scare Jewish voters and, perhaps equally important, Jewish political donors. However, Cameron allows that the Republican broadside has forced the Kerry campaign into "doing some catch-up" in the Jewish community. "A lot of things were put aside to focus on getting the nomination," Cameron explains. (While Kerry�s ancestral Jewish connection - his paternal grandparents were Jews who converted to Catholicism - can�t hurt his chances with Jewish voters, notes Footlik, it probably won�t do much for the candidate either.)

Footlik believes American Jews by and large retain their social and economic liberalism, and that once they become more familiar with Kerry�s record on Israel, Jewish voters upset with Bush over such issues as abortion rights, church-state separation, health care, job creation, the environment, and tax policy will slow the Jewish slide into the Republican fold. "Clearly, because of circumstances, Israel�s security is a top issue for many in the community right now. I know it is for me," says Footlik. "But Jews aren�t single-issue voters."

Footlik says one aspect of the Bush presidency he�ll stress in his campaign visits to Jewish communities is the Christian right�s influence on Oval Office policies - an issue that some say has been crystallized for American Jews by the overwhelming embrace by evangelical Protestants of Mel Gibson�s "The Passion of the Christ," a film regarded as anti-Semitic by many Jews.

Steve Rabinowitz, a Washington political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House and also advised Ehud Barak on election strategy, says "no matter what" Kerry can expect "75 to 80 percent" of the Jewish vote in November. Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish

Democratic Council, an independent Democratic support group, notes that even if Bush garners as much as 35 percent of the Jewish vote - which he insists is unlikely - "it only gets Republicans] back to 1988. That�s got to be disappointing, given how hard they�ve worked to get the Jewish vote."

But could 35 percent be enough to swing the election by affecting outcomes in such tightly contested states as Florida, Illinois or Michigan, where small shifts could have seismic consequences on the electoral college count? Footlik insists Bush won�t get that many Jewish votes. Nor does he expect this election to be anywhere near as close as 2000, when U.S. Supreme Court judges had to sort out who won. But he acknowledges that it�s still too early to predict with any certainty how the campaign might play out.

"Jews are a small part of the electorate, but we�re an important 1 to 2 percent because we turn out to vote and we can make a difference in some key states," Footlik says, as our conversation ends. "So this campaign will not take any state or any Jewish community for granted. We will fight very hard for every single vote."

May 31, 2004

  

Jewish World