Israel Matzav

When money doesn't equal power

Here's some good news from Lenny Ben David: J Street is having a little trouble getting its PAC recipients to vote in accordance with its positions. Take, for example, the House vote on opposing action on the Goldstone Report. J Street opposed the House measure.

J Street takes great pride in their upstart political action committee. “The PAC distributed over $578,000 to its candidates,” J Street’s website crows. “[That’s] more than any other pro-Israel PAC in the two-year cycle, despite only launching publicly in April 2008.”

[NB: That $578,000 distributed was out of more than $840,000 raised, according to Federal Election Commission records.]

Since that election cycle, J Street’s PAC boasted contributions in 2009 of more than $30,000 to Representative Donna Edwards of Maryland and $35,000 to Steve Cohen of Tennessee.

Those PAC contributions translate to political clout, right?

Absolutely wrong.

In the case of the Goldstone vote, not one of the top 10 J Street PAC recipients in the 2008 cycle voted against the pro-Israel resolution, and some of those candidates (Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio, Gary Peters of Michigan, Debbie Halvorson of Illinois, and Steve Cohen) had received as much as $30,000 to $47,000. Only Donna Edwards, the J Street darling for whom the organization ran a special appeal in 2009, voted against the resolution. Others who voted with Edwards included Arab-American representatives, congressional gadflies such as Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, and a handful of representatives who are long-time critics of Israel.

Heh.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:13 PM