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Finkelstein, A

Arthur Finkelstein is a political consultant/spin doctor working primarily for New York governor George Pataki, and the New York Republican Party. Although Finkelstein is a secretive character, Berkowitz lists some of his background:

Finkelstein has had a long and colorful political career that has seen him work with some of the most reactionary politicians both at home and abroad. He runs Arthur J. Finkelstein & Associates, and during his thirty-year career he has worked for President Reagan and President Nixon. In addition to spearheading the then-little-known Pataki's 1994 victory over Mario Cuomo, he was also a top adviser to Alfonse D'Amato and Jesse Helms during their Senate careers. But he hasn't always led his clients to victory -- in 1996 he was a major, if well-hidden, consultant to Senator Bob Dole's losing presidential campaign.In addition, Finkelstein was also an early director of Terry Dolan's groundbreaking political operation, the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC).Finkelstein is an international player as well. According to AP's Humbert, "Finkelstein has been increasingly active in Israeli politics. He helped Benjamin Netanyahu during his 1996 campaign for prime minister and he is an adviser to the current Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon."And, you can add one more element to Finkelstein's reality; he is gay, yet he's worked for a gaggle of gay-bashing Republican Senators including Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.), Jesse Helms (R-N.C), Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Sen. (Bob) Smith (R-New Hampshire), all of whom voted against legislation banning discrimination against gays while Finkelstein was working for them.Finkelstein is also Jewish, but that didn't stop him from using anti-Semitism during a 1978 South Carolina congressional race between Republican Carroll Campbell and Democrat Max Heller.[1]

On 16 January 2006, Jeff Halper, an Israeli-American anthropology professor and anti-occupation activist stated:

(33:35 min mark) Casting yourself as a victim is so effective politically, because, again, you are off the hook, you cannot be held accountable -- so that Israel didn't want to give it up. It tries to mix -- it is very hard to do -- it tries to mix this image of Shin Bet agents, effective spies, the Six Day War, defeating the higher Arab world, Israel as the ally of the United States in the war against terrorism, we are now going to nuke Iran, that whole thing that makes Israel a major player... But wait a minute, if we are a major player somebody is going to ask about the occupation. At the same time that we are the fourth largest nuclear power sending our missiles to Iran, we also have to present ourselves as the victims -- the little Jews in the ghetto that those bad bully Arabs are going to beat up. So, that is a very difficult sell, but I think that Israeli PR is so sophisticated. They use the most sophisticated American PR firms, specially a guy called Finkelstein that you have never heard of in the States, but he is the dirty tricks guy for the Republicans. When Karl Rove and the Republicans when they go through all the campaign and you start getting negative advertising, the dirty tricks, and the Swift Boats, the dirty-dirty stuff, that is Finkelstein. And Finkelstein always runs the Likud campaigns in Israel. And Paul Wolfowitz -- I don't know if people know this -- the former deputy Secretary of Defense, the architect of the Iraq war, today the president of the World Bank, the leading neocon, was Netanyahu's campaign manager in 1996. So, this is all a hand and glove type of a thing. So you use these American firms, like Finkelstein's firms, to get over this contradiction to show that Israel is a strong proud Jewish state, that is a strong regional power that could take on anybody, but at the same time sell the other image that Israel is the little Jew as the victim. And has done so successfully. [2]

Clients

References

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ Source: MP3 audio
  3. ↑ Nir Hasson, Barkat hires Arthur Finkelstein to counter Netanyahu, Steinitz, Haaretz, 24 Dec 2010.

External Resources

Hunting Hillary Clinton

Arthur Finkelstein, long-time GOP political consultant, to lead campaign

to defeat Hillary re-election and derail her presidential hopes

by Bill Berkowitz

www.dissidentvoice.org

February 17, 2005

“Stop Her Now,” is the name of the new Web site soon to be launched by Arthur Finkelstein, the chief political guru of New York Governor George Pataki, and one of the country's most successful yet least known political consultants/spin doctors. The “Her” at StopHerNow.com is New York Senator Hillary Clinton. According to the New York Post, Finkelstein, the longtime master of the political attack ad, hopes the site will raise as much as $10 million from Hillary-haters across the nation and provide a gathering point for conservative activists working to defeat her in next year's Senatorial election. Hillary's defeat would likely derail any presidential aspirations she might have.

The New York Post's Fredric Dicker has called Finkelstein “a secretive and sometimes controversial national GOP consultant who played a key role in Pataki's defeat of Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1994.” The Associated Press’ political writer Marc Humbert characterized Finkelstein as being “media-shy.” Nearly ten years ago, CNN's Jonathan Karl wrote of Finkelstein: “He is the stuff of Hollywood: A man who can topple even the most powerful foes, yet so secretive that few have ever seen him.” Former New York Senator Alphonse D'Amato maintained that Finkelstein “is probably one of the brightest, cutting-edge political scientists I've ever met.”

...

Finkelstein's Web site launch comes on the heels of his having been fired by the state's Republican Party "in the wake of Republican setbacks in New York in the November elections," AP reported. Pataki, thinking about a possible run for president in 2008, “has said he will personally continue to use” Finkelstein, “but [he] will seek other political advice, too.”

Who is Arthur Finkelstein? Will his “Stop Her Now” campaign be more successful than the Stop Hillary efforts of 2000?

Finkelstein has had a long and colorful political career that has seen him work with some of the most reactionary politicians both at home and abroad. He runs Arthur J. Finkelstein & Associates, and during his thirty-year career he has worked for President Reagan and President Nixon. In addition to spearheading the then-little-known Pataki's 1994 victory over Mario Cuomo, he was also a top adviser to Alfonse D'Amato and Jesse Helms during their Senate careers. But he hasn't always led his clients to victory -- in 1996 he was a major, if well-hidden, consultant to Senator Bob Dole's losing presidential campaign.

In addition, Finkelstein was also an early director of Terry Dolan's groundbreaking political operation, the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC).

Finkelstein is an international player as well. According to AP's Humbert, “Finkelstein has been increasingly active is Israeli politics. He helped Benjamin Netanyahu during his 1996 campaign for prime minister and he is an adviser to the current Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.”

And, you can add one more element to Finkelstein's reality; he is gay, yet he's worked for a gaggle of gay-bashing Republican Senators including Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.), Jesse Helms (R-N.C), Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Sen. (Bob) Smith (R-New Hampshire), all of whom voted against legislation banning discrimination against gays while Finkelstein was working for them.

Finkelstein is also Jewish, but that didn't stop him from using anti-Semitism during a 1978 South Carolina congressional race between Republican Carroll Campbell and Democrat Max Heller. A 1996 report published by the National Jewish Democratic Council summarized the story:

“According to press accounts, Campbell commissioned a poll, conducted by the notorious GOP pollster Arthur Finkelstein, in which voters were asked their views of Campbell, who was described as ‘a native South Carolinian,’ and Heller, who was described as ‘a Jewish immigrant.’ The Campbell-Finkelstein poll also asked voters whether they approved or disapproved of U.S. aid to Israel, hardly a significant issue in the campaign except that it injected Heller's religion into the race and implied that, as a Jew, he would favor Israel over the U.S. Then just five days before the election, an independent candidate attacked Heller because Heller did not ‘believe in Jesus Christ.’ Heller lost by less than 6,000 votes. Years after the election it was revealed that there had been contact between the independent candidate and the Campbell campaign, leading some observers to believe that the independent candidate had entered the race at the behest of the Campbell campaign.”

His non-political clients have included Time Magazine, Scott Paper,McDonalds, Quaker Oats and theTrump Organization. This past summer, Finkelstein was hired by opponents of the new stadium on the West Side of Manhattan being proposed for the New York Jets football team to prepare anti-stadium advertisements. Finkelstein & Associates recently entered into a joint venture with Kidron Strategies to provide consulting services in Israel specifically focusing on the corporate and consumer markets.

In a rare interview in December 2004, with Boaz Gaon of Maariv, an Israeli daily newspaper, Finkelstein seemed to be suggesting that things may have shifted too far to the right in the U.S.: “The political centre has disappeared, and the Republican Party has become the party of the Christian right more so than in any other period in modern history,” he said.

“Bush's strategy secures the power of the American Christian right not only for this term,” Finkelstein said. “In fact, it secures its ability to choose the next Republican president.”

Finkelstein told Maariv that he was troubled by the strategy of dividing the country by “values of religion and culture.”

“Bush courted the evangelical vote,” he said, “and turned these elections, in fact, into a referendum on the religious and cultural nature of America. This is my problem.”

Finkelstein's comments reflect his concerns that Governor Pataki would have a hard time getting a GOP presidential nomination given the party's current domination by the Christian right.

Stuart Stevens didn’t always live life in the shadows. As an up and coming political star, Stevens used to enjoy the parties and celebrity, but that was before he helped George W. Bush win the controversial 2000 presidential election and his friends started shunning him. The Hollywood group who used to find his act so charming  had become disenchanted with Stevens’ act, they didn’t like his tactics, and they particularly didn’t like the people he was surrounding himself with, men like Karl Rove, Stevens’ longtime friend and collaborator.

Stuart Stevens was born in 1954 in Jackson, Mississippi. He has the reputation of being an easy going Southern good ol’ boy, but he’s anything but. Pennsylvania Lieutenant Gov. Mark Singel calls Stevens “ruthless”.

A native of Jackson, Miss., Stevens, 58, grew up in a Democratic household in a town and state dominated by Democrats. The Republican Party, he says, inexplicably drew him in.. Read more at the Pittsburgh Tribune

At a time when the Civil Rights struggle was in full force, when Dixiecrat segregationists were fleeing the Democratic Party, Stevens decided to join the Republican Party. While anti-Civil Rights leaders, like Strom Thurmond, Todd Cochran, and Jesse Helms, were fleeing the Democratic Party because of Democratic support for the 1964 Voting Rights Act and putting stakes down in the “new” Republican Party, Stevens decided to hop aboard their divisive bus. Stevens’ close friend Haley Barbour remembers that time of White Citizen’s Councils fondly.

Republican political consultant Mike Murphy called Stuart Stevens “a slippery character.” He’s a man unafraid of breaking rules, an endurance athlete who playfully experimented with steroids;

As a kid growing up in the Deep South, what I liked most about sports was the endless opportunities presented to hit somebody and not get into trouble.”…His life as a political consultant, Mr. Stevens wrote, “served as an outlet for my violent tendencies.”   Read more at the New York Times

Stevens is ready and willing to get into the mud;

They’re not afraid to, as one admirer of the team put it, “wield the knife” when necessary…Stevens is a former film student who spent a short stint working under veteran political knife fighter Arthur Finkelstein. Read more at Politico

Arthur Finkelstein is one of the big names in the Republican political consulting business. After working on Ayn Rand’s radio show, Finkelstein worked  alongside controversial Romney aide Alex Castellanos in getting North Carolina’s segregationist Jesse Helms elected to the senate. Stevens learned from the best.

After working for politicians like Todd Cochran, Haley Barbour, Chris Christie, Roy Blount, and George W. Bush, Stevens went to work for John McCain. He urged McCain to go negative, “you have to keep your foot on his throat,” he declared.

Stevens then joined the Romney campaign, under specific conditions, of course;

“He wasn’t going to do [the Romney campaign] unless he was going to be The Guy,” says one former colleague… Stevens sought to reprise the attack strategy for Romney… Stevens quipped: “I was confident we could come up with a spin. You could spin anything if you did it with enough confidence.”   Read more at The New Republic

Stevens is no shrinking violet and many blame him for turning Romney into a nasty campaigner;

(He) has the reputation, as a prominent G.O.P. consultant who admires Stevens’s talent put it, of one who “does not play well with others.”…The strategist’s gift for withering criticism is rubbing off on his boss.  Read more at the New York Times

Many people fear that Stuart Stevens may make race an issue in the 2012 Presidential election;

As its strategy of racial polarization unfolds – with the latest and most blatant example emerging in a blatantly false attack on the Obama Administration’s welfare policies. Suspicions that Romney might seek to inflame racist anger toward America’s first black president began to arise when his campaign strategist Stuart Stevens – a scion of Mississippi’s Republican Party – coined the slogan “Obama Isn’t Working,” which sounded to some like code for ethnic stereotyping…  now the Romney campaign – and the candidate himself – have seized upon welfare, the classical subject of racial stereotype, to divide the country against Obama with false accusations… This isn’t a muted dog-whistle.  It’s a deafening foghorn.   Read more at The National Memo

Is Stuart Stevens carefully laying out a racially charged campaign to appeal to white voters? The answer to this will reveal itself in the coming weeks as Mitt Romney lays out his case to be president. Romney should know that there will be no hiding behind quiet dog whistles and racist subtlety, however. His man, Stuart Stevens, has made it clear that he’s a believer that voters are very attuned in picking up the messages he’s sending.

“Voters are very sophisticated consumers of all these little signs and codes,” Stevens told The Baltimore Sun that year, referring to the firm’s range of spots for Ehrlich that targeted working-class voters. “People may not read all that much, but they really know how to look.”   Read more at Politico