http://www.jewishledger.com/2013/04/arthur/
The American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC), the world’s largest organization of political and public affairs specialists, recently announced its Hall of Fame inductees for 2013. The award that the industry has dubbed the ‘Pollies’ is the highest honor that members of the political consultant profession can bestow on its colleagues.
This year’s honorees include Arthur J. Finkelstein, David Axelrod, David Plouff and Lance Tarrance. The Ledger has written about Arthur Finkelstein a number of times and has followed his career closely.
Throughout his 50-plus year career, Arthur Finkelstein has dedicated his efforts – with great success — to getting Conservative candidates elected to office. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in Levittown and Queens, he attended Columbia University, where he worked on radio programs for Ayn Rand and began his distinguished career by volunteering on the Draft Goldwater committee. His first big win as a pollster/strategist came in 1970 when James Buckley ran on the newly minted New York Conservative Party line and unexpectedly won a Senate seat in a three-way race. Finkelstein, who was 25 at the time, engineered that effort. In 1972, he worked in the Nixon White House where he developed the successful strategy to seek out White Urban Ethnics as a swing group – helping to lead the incumbent president to a landslide victory. At the same time, he was instrumental in identifying and electing to the United States Senate a North Carolina TV broadcaster by the name of Jesse Helms.
From there Arthur went on to help elect more candidates to the Senate and House than any other consultant in the business at that time or since. The list includes many recognizable names, like Strom Thurmond, Alfonse D’Amato, Connie Mack III, Don Nickles and Orrin Hatch. He also at different times in his career worked with others who helped shape the Republican majority of the early 1980s, such as Gordon Humphrey, John East, Roger Jepson and Bob Smith. He also worked with other notable candidates like Jack Kemp and Rudy Boschwitz and was critical to the career of George Pataki. Finkelstein was also a instrumental in the Reagan campaigns of 1976 and 1980. All of the candidates Finkelstein worked with were not only conservatives, but were also strong proponents of the close relationship between the United States and Israel.