AAI, ADC, CAIR, NAAA, etc. are active lobby groups and individual nations hire professional lobby groups and lawyers to lobby on their behalf. AIPAC is not even listed among the top lobby groups.
AIPAC and its affiliates are the largest donors to American Politicians...
AIPAC Money USC News21
The Individual Contributions
During the two decades
M.J. Rosenberg worked for Democrats on the Hill, he and his congressional bosses nodded their heads in agreement when AIPAC members gave out its talking points every year on the last day of the annual policy conference.
“You just gotta say, ‘Yes sir, I agree, absolutely, nothing better than Israel,’ because you don’t want them to get mad at you. You wanna keep the campaign contributions going, ” says Rosenberg, who is now a senior foreign policy fellow at the progressive think tank
Media Matters Action Network.
"Thousands of donors associated with AIPAC give hundreds of thousands of dollars to campaigns all around the country,” says Rosenberg, who also worked for AIPAC in the '80s but left after he thought the organization had adopted hawkish policies.
Smart political organizations like AIPAC understand writing a check directly from that organization to a candidate has minimal impact, says
Dan Schnur, director of the
Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the
University of Southern California, a frequent speaker at AIPAC events.
“The much better way of catching the attention of a candidate, particularly a candidate who needs a lot of money for his or her campaign, is not just to write a check but to have large numbers of individuals each write their own checks,” he says, explaining one of the things that makes AIPAC so effective.
The Pro-Israel PACS
Since 1990, the whole of the pro-Israel lobby has given almost $96 million in congressional campaign contributions and funnels a lot of the money through local political action committees, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
Although AIPAC does not have its own PAC, it has its political department analyze who the pro-Israel congressional candidates are across the country and then distributes that information to the pro-Israel PACs, according
Rosenberg.
“That's what they do,” Rosenberg says. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have a political department at AIPAC, and they have a
big political department there.”
But AIPAC says it does not rate Congress members or work with any political action committees. Those running in its circles say they’re so successful because it’s not hard for them to make their case to elected officials.
“Congress is pro-Israel because America is pro-Israel. Have you ever pushed on an open door? It’s pretty easy,” says
Josh Block, a former media relations head of AIPAC who now runs his own lobbying firm.
But some critics of AIPAC disagree that it’s such a simple equation, including one of the founders of
J Street, an organization often seen as the more liberal alternative in the American Jewish community.
“If this were all about shared values,” says
Daniel Levy, “then I imagine the question to focus at AIPAC would be, ‘Why aren’t the 30 political action committees associated with the AIPAC wing of pro-Israel advocacy disbanded?’ ”
On the Hill
Since 1998, AIPAC has spent
$20,269,436 lobbying on the Hill, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to tracking money in politics.
A team of
11 in-house lobbyists work for AIPAC, including the executive director himself, Howard Kohr, and Jeff Kuhnreich, former senior policy adviser to Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).
The American Israel Education Foundation
AIPAC has an affiliate called the
American Israel Education Foundation that spends money on educational programs, materials and travel to promote AIPAC issues. As a 501(c)(3) organization, contributions made to the American Israel Education Foundation are tax deductible, unlike those made to AIPAC. Under the law the AIPAC affiliate is limited in how much money it can give to political activities.
Since 2000, the foundation has spent almost
$5 million on congressional travel to Israel and sent congressmen on a total of 575 trips, according to
Legistorm, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money and travel of legislators. The top-five most expensive trips were taken by Republicans.