Arthur J. Finkelstein - Campaign Style and Reviews

Campaign Style and Reviews

Finkelstein is known for his hard-edged political campaigns, which often focus on a single message with great repetition. He is credited with helping to make "liberal" a dirty word in the United States during the late 1980s and 1990s through the use of commercial messages such as this, intended to damage the image of Jack Reed:

That's liberal. That's Jack Reed. That's wrong. Call liberal Jack Reed and tell him his record on welfare is just too liberal for you.

He also helped create the idea for this commercial message about Minnesota U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone:

Paul Wellstone. Embarrassingly liberal. Decades out of touch.

While often successful, Finkelstein's tactics have sometimes backfired – in 1996, his repeated attacks against Wellstone may have helped galvanize Wellstone's liberal grass-roots base. Republican Sen. Rod Grams eventually condemned Finkelstein's negative ads against Wellstone as excessive; however, his client (former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz) came closer that year than any GOP challenger to defeating a Democratic incumbent.

"Finkelstein is the ultimate sort of Dr. Strangelove, who believes you can largely disregard what the politicians are going to say and do, what the newspapers are going to do, and create a simple and clear and often negative message, which, repeated often enough, can bring you to victory," said Philip Friedman, a Manhattan consultant who got his start working for Finkelstein Democratic rival David Garth.

Republican strategist Roger Ailes described Finkelstein as "a polling guy with creative talents".

"I think he's basically sort of a mad scientist," said John Fossel, chairman of Oppenheimer Funds, "and a scientist he is. He really understands numbers." Finkelstein polled in Fossel's unsuccessful Republican Congressional campaign in Westchester County in 1982. "We had a knock-down, drag-out over whether busing was an issue in Westchester. His polls told him it was. I said, 'I don't think it is, but if it is, it isn't to me,' and we didn't use it."

"He is one of the most creative people I have ever worked with," said Carter Wrenn, who worked on Republican campaigns for 20 years with Finkelstein in North Carolina. "He is brilliant in terms of analyzing polls and numbers. He has a unique combination of an analytical and creative mind.... This guy's a workaholic. He must work 18 hours a day.... If you need him, he comes."

"Just knock on his head, and he'll give you an idea."—Tom Ellis, cofounder of the National Congressional Club, on Finkelstein.

Finkelstein's early style is described in an account of a Congressional primary race in Arizona.

Finkelstein has given advice to political candidates or elected officials to perform the "dance of the honest man", a metaphor for responding to "questions about transparency, honesty, or integrity" by imagining oneself as a typical, honest voter.

England's The Daily Telegraph: "In the 1996 election in Israel, Arthur Finkelstein, the American consultant who had turned 'liberal' into a swear word, used polling data to pinpoint precisely the issue over which Israelis would reject a deal with the Palestinians—the division of Jerusalem—and propel Benjamin Netanyahu to a victory based on exemplary scare-mongering."