Articles

Campaign threatens Jewish leader for backing his opponent

By Pauline Dubkin Yearwood
Chicago Jewish News

Posted November 3, 2006

With the election just days away, the race for the 10th District seat in the U.S. House has become more volatile than ever after the revelation that a staffer for Republican Rep. Mark Kirk tried to force Chicago Jewish community leader Robert Schrayer to drop his support for Kirk’s opponent, Dan Seals, a Democrat.

In an interview with Chicago Jewish News, Schrayer called the e-mail threat “a crime” and Abner Mikva, a former White House counsel and federal judge, has asked federal and state prosecutors to investigate the incident.

Noting that he supported Kirk, who is considered a staunch friend of Israel, in the last two elections, Schrayer said he “had become disenchanted with the administration, and (Kirk) represents the leadership of the Congress for that administration. I subsequently met Dan Seals, liked him very much, and decided to back him.” That happened “very early in the campaign,” he said.

Schrayer, who heads a Chicago-area insurance firm, has held a number of top leadership positions in the Chicago and national Jewish communities. He is a former general chairman of the Jewish United Fund and a former president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.

Schrayer noted that after he declared his support for Seals, several local Jewish activists suggested to Jewish organizational professionals that “I should not be involved in a leadership role because I was not supporting Kirk. I kind of ignored that.”

Then, in August, Schrayer, who was recently named chairman of the Tel Aviv University American Council, became aware that Caryn Garber, a Kirk staffer, had e-mailed Sam Witkin, president of the council, asking him to contact Itamar Rabinovich, the university’s president, to request that he call Schrayer “and tell him that his actions can have a very bad effect on the University.”

“Your new Chicago TAU ‘chief’ ... is working overtime to defeat Mark Kirk. The community is not pleased with his out front actions,” Garber wrote. The e-mail continued: “We understand that Schrayer hates Bush ... that has NOTHING to do with Mark Steven Kirk. Revenge is a dish best served cold. I know that you and Itamar would not want TAU to be sullied by (Schrayer’s) out of control actions. .. believe me, HE is the talk of the Federation leadership and NOT the kind of talk you’d like.”

Kirk serves on the House Appropriations Committee’s Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, which makes grants to organizations in Israel and other countries.

Witkin e-mailed Schrayer about Garber’s e-mail and noted that Kirk served on the subcommittee, which “supported our USAID grant ... this past year as part of the Foreign Aid Bill.”

Schrayer said when he found out about Garber’s e-mail, it was “kind of a shock to me. I was not sure what to do about it. I discussed it with some other people and turned it over to Dan Seals, who gave it to some of the press.”

A story in the Chicago Sun-Times reported the e-mail and included a statement by Kirk, who said that Garber’s letter “does not reflect my view. When I heard about it, I was upset.” He told the Sun-Times that he reprimanded Garber and told her she would be fired if it happened again.

That response was not good enough for Schrayer, who said he wrote Kirk originally in August, as soon as he found out about the e-mail. Kirk replied and asked for a copy of the letter, which Schrayer sent him, he said.

“Since then I have written him five e-mails, which he has ignored, asking him what he was doing” about Garber, Schrayer said. “Now I found out he said if she did it again, he would fire her. I just don’t understand why if somebody committed a crime like that, why they would wait until the next time to fire her.

“I think it’s terrible — a sham. We should be encouraging people to vote for whoever is their best candidate. We shouldn’t be trying to intimidate people as to how they vote,” he said.

Schrayer said he has never heard anything from Tel Aviv University about the matter, and doesn’t believe anyone there would be concerned about it. “I don’t think the president (of the university) even knows about it,” he said.

Meanwhile, the story continued to gain momentum as Seals held a press conference about the matter. “It’s all about accountability in government,” he said. A spokesperson for his campaign said, “If somebody on Dan’s staff did something like this, Dan would fire them immediately.”

Kirk “stands with President Bush; he can’t say no to him and he can’t even say no to his own staffer,” the spokesperson said.

In addition, Mikva, a Democratic activist who once represented the 10th District, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine asking them to investigate allegations that “a federal employee, a staff member of” Kirk, “engaged in a scheme to intimidate a political supporter of Congressman Kirk’s election opponent.” Garber’s e-mail may have violated state and federal laws that criminalize “intimidating, threatening or coercing” anyone in an attempt to influence their vote or support of a candidate, the letter said.

David Goldenberg, deputy executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said, “What we are seeing here is Rep. Kirk’s true colors. While the cornerstone of his campaign has been that he is a middle-of-the-road, independent Congressperson, this negligence and these actions and refusal to fire his staffer who may have in fact broken the law show that he is no different than the Tom DeLays and Jack Abramoffs of the Republican Party.

“The fact that Congressman Kirk doesn’t view his staffer’s actions as a fireable offense is as misguided as it is irresponsible. This is another sad example of Republicans using their official positions to bully people to advance their own political aspirations.”
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