WJC’s Ronald Lauder to Fund $25M Campaign to Fight Anti-Semitism in the US

Edited by: TJVNews.com

Billionaire philanthropist Ronald Lauder is funding a $25 million campaign against political candidates in the United States who support or normalize anti-Semitism.

Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, announced the new campaign, called the Anti-Semitism Accountability Project, or ASAP, on Monday. The effort will include a nonprofit organization and a super PAC.

The New York Times reported that Lauder is a longtime Republican donor, but that he plans to use the organization to go after both Democrats and Republicans who traffic in anti-Semitic language and tropes. “It’s my money and what I stand for,” Mr. Lauder said in an interview in his Manhattan office with the Times.

Lauder will have the final say on which politicians — federal, state and local — will be targeted for defeat, according to The New York Times.

Lauder told the Times that he has already hired teams of researchers to follow political races across the country “from the most local to the major ones” to track anti-Semitic comments. The effort is being managed by Tusk Strategies, the consulting firm of Bradley Tusk, who managed a re-election campaign for former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Others involved include Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster, and Nelson Warfield, a Republican strategist and longtime adviser to Mr. Lauder.

“If it’s a city councilman, or it’s a U.S. senator, or presidential candidate, we’ll know about it,” Mr. Lauder predicted, according to the NY Times interview.

According to the NY Times, Lauder was first appointed to an ambassadorship by the late President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The Times reported that he has given $200,000 to President Trump’s shared committees with the Republican Party, and he donated $1.65 million in 2018 to a super PAC that ran ads against Democratic House and Senate candidates

A statement announcing the launch of ASAP said it would “also respond and take action against institutions and cultural figures who support anti-Semitism.” Lauder also told The Times that he would look into universities and their professors, and pressure them to stop anti-Semitic statements and actions by contacting major donors, according to a JTA report.

ASAP will partner with existing organizations that are working across the country to combat anti-Semitism, the statement said, and encouraged contact from those groups through its website.

The JTA reported that the launch comes in response to a documented surge in anti-Semitism across America, according to the statement. Today, 14 percent of Americans hold anti-Semitic beliefs, as compared to 7 percent from a survey released by the Anti-Defamation League in 2014.

The poll used the definition of anti-Semitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

            (JTA)