The Clintons did in fact have more leverage than Twersky, because he wasn't the only one selling a product—just the tastiest pastries at that time. There were two other options available that fit the bill, and both of them involved US Representatives from New York districts. Both of them were Jewish, and both wanted presidential pardons. One of them even got it. So how did Twersky succeed on a grand scale where two major political figures in the Democratic party got comparatively little? Twersky’s sect was largely insular and very fundamentalist, whereas the other two are the major players in two entire districts. A seeming conundrum.
In politics, there is no such thing. Let's consider each in turn.
Gary Ackerman represented New York’s 5th district, which was largely comprised of Queens. Keep in mind that since 2000 almost all of New York's districts have been redrawn, holding true for all of the following cases. Ackerman solicited the president for a pardon for Jonathan Pollard, a former intelligence analyst who was sent to prison in an extraordinarily high profile case whereby he was convicted of espionage for feeding U.S. intelligence to the Israelis.
He did not get his pardon.
Jerrold Nadler represented the 8th district. On today’s map it is largely in Queens, but in 2000 it consisted of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Nadler was seeking a pardon for Susan Rosenberg, a woman convicted of robbing a Brinks truck in 1981. Nadler was petitioning on behalf of Rosenberg’s mother, whom he knew through the extremely affluent Congregation B’nei Jeshurun of which they were both members.
Nadler got his pardon.
Why?
Ackerman’s district had broken for the Democrats so heavily and so consistently that the odds of Hillary losing there were about zero. In fact, it’s the only part of Long Island she won in 2000. Also, Ackerman was looking for a pardon for a man convicted of espionage against the United States of America. Without nude photos of Hillary with a black prostitute shooting up heroin in an abandoned dock near the coast, this is the tip of the wing feathers of a prayer. In a radio interview with prominent Jewish radio host Rabbi Potasnik in 2001:
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Ackerman: Let me say this. I visited with Jonathan some years ago, before he was in North Carolina, when he was still in a maximum-security prison in Marion, in solitary confinement, as a matter of fact, and I spent some time listening to him. Then, fast-forward it to last year, when I met with President Clinton to discuss the case.
And it was interesting because Clinton said that the thing he was troubled with was that Pollard has shown no remorse. I was absolutely shocked and I said to him, Mr. President, I'm sure you're being briefed because you're certainly not meeting with Jonathan Pollard; but you're not being given the facts. I must tell you that I've never seen someone more remorseful than is Pollard.
Rabbi Potasnik: Congressman, let me go to one other name, here. The FALN terrorists who were pardoned by the president - they certainly showed no remorse. So, if remorse was the excuse...
Ackerman: Joe, I'm going to trump you. Caspar Weinberger who was pardoned by a president showed no remorse, either; and he's the guy who put the screws to Pollard.
John: Congressman Ackerman, let's go back to that meeting with Bill Clinton who had the power to do this last January. What's your intuition why it didn't get done in January this year?
Ackerman: I think it didn't get done because the people around the president and some of the people in the State Department didn't want it to happen.
We had our discussion, actually, on Air Force One on the way back from the Cardinal's funeral in New York. The president suggested that I come to the White House and talk to him about Pollard. Yet every time I called for an appointment, someone ran interference and the meeting never materialized - those days were also pretty busy with everything happening at the end, as we saw. But there were people clearly who didn't want this to happen...
John: Who were these people and why did they not want it to happen?
Ackerman: The answer is, they are people in the State Department, for sure; people in the Intelligence community - some, for sure. And the reason why? I don't know. I could guess, but I don't like ascribing motives...
Rabbi Potasnik: Well, Congressman, let me do it. I believe there is anti-Semitism in this. When one sees Jonathan being treated so differently from so many others, I think one has to come forward and say, there is an evil here - the evil of anti-semitism.
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Push come to shove, nobody—especially the president— cares about racism or anything else if you’ve got nothing to offer on your side of the table that is worth something in a political contract. Principles are, to borrow the Yiddish, for schmucks. There is no prophylactic in the universe thick enough for the Clintons to go to bed with him. Jerrold Nadler however had a completely different arrangement and something very tantalizing.
Hillary Clinton actually lost by 200,000 votes outside of New York City (Bronx, Kings, Queens, New York, and Richmond). She definitely was expected to win overall by election time, but early on this was a tenuous question. New York City represents about a third of the available votes in the state, and although she won NYC by expected wide margins she actually lost Richmond. Hindsight is 20-20, but at the time the question of how wide those margins would be could have been the difference in the election. Some help from a Jewish leader and his friends in Manhattan wouldn’t be the worst thing, and Congregation B’nai Jeshurun is right smack in the middle of it. Also, almost nobody is going to remember a random felon who attacked one of the thousands of Brinks trucks in the country almost 20 years ago, so there’s comparatively little in the game. Great. That deal is simple.
So why, why, why was Twersky so much more successful? New Square was just outside of the 8th district at that time in the contiguous county of Rockland—a county Hillary lost by only 4,000 votes out of over 100,000 cast. Also, the endorsement of the president’s wife by two prominent US Representatives from his own party was a given anyway. Unless they were Hasidic and looked the part, there wasn't even a good photo op to be had. Besides, what were they going to do, give the most powerful Democrat and leader in the world and his wife the finger? Ironically, the fact that they were Jewish would be a mere Band-Aid if not just a private prayer in terms of salvaging Hillary’s reputation in the Jewish community. Twersky on the other hand was perfect for the moment. Plain and simple.
There is one more tantalizing thing to point out. At that time New Square and significant portions of Rockland County were in line to be redistricted to become New York’s new 18th district. In 2000, the 18th District was currently held by a US Representative named Nita Lowey. Lowey was a Democrat, Jewish, and...
...was the first person every Democrat in the state wanted to run for the senate seat in 2000 until she stepped aside in deference to Ms. Clinton. Lowey had never faced a difficult election in her life, and had she chosen for some reason to stand up to Hillary she would be at high risk of losing the Senate opportunity and at 100% chance of losing her seat in the US House of Representatives because she couldn’t have run. That would leave a gap before she could try again in 2002.
This redistricting was a bit of an unknown commodity for a Democrat. In 2000 the 18th District consisted of the Bronx, Queens, and parts of the affluent Westchester County. The Bronx and Queens were a given, but Westchester absolutely was not. It was highly affluent, and as an example of its voting margin, of the approximately 379,000 votes cast in the 2000 Senate election, Hillary only won by about 20,000. In contrast, Hillary cleaned out the Bronx and Queens by over 500,000 votes.
Not Rockland though. The 2002 18th District was going to consist of parts of Rockland and Westchester alone, and one of those parts was New Square. Again, it's not many votes, but in a tight race like Hillary faced in both counties a US Representative could have a much harder fight. From a Democratic perspective this was a questionable state of affairs, and one which I doubt a Democratic candidate would want to enter after attempting to supplant the Clintons for a senate seat —likely getting smeared into the dust in the process— after sitting out of politics entirely for two years.
Of course, all of this was moot because how the hell Hillary planned to run for the New York senate when she lived in the White House in D.C. was anyone’s guess. Except the Clintons’, of course. They decided to buy a house in a fashionable, affluent county in New York State just under the wire to get Hillary’s name into the game; Westchester seemed just lovely when their real estate agent showed them around. It had a lot of movers and shakers, the house was gorgeous and a great investment in an area that included such fixtures as Columbia University—where Chelsea would go on to get her Masters in Public Health.
This next part is pure trivia, but it is a fun coincidence. Barbara Tversky is a Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She worked with her late husband and famed psychologist Amos Tversky at Stanford—where Chelsea got her B.A. in history. Tversky did not quite live long enough to receive the Nobel Prize awarded to his compatriot for his work in comparative ignorance—the useful political theory that if people can choose a known quantity over an unknown quantity, even if they are fairly obviously equal, they almost always for the the known quantity. As it so happens, the name “Tversky” is a variation of the surname of his relatives that goes aaaaaall the way back to a famous rabbi who started a Jewish sect in Chernobyl known as Skver Hasidism.
That’s right. A distant relative of the Clintons’ new best friend David. Now I will stress that this is almost without question merely happenstance, and I do mean that. If the Tversky's actually new Twersky was a relative, much less existed, I'm guessing they wanted nothing to do with him and his cult. The purpose of this is not to foment ridiculous conspiracy theories, but I really couldn’t bring myself to leave it out.
Anyway, Westchester is a great place to live, and as if things could get any better, an additional plus it was that it was represented in the US House of Representatives by a very highly-regarded congresswoman by the name of Nita Lowey.
If that’s a coincidence I will happily smoke Mr. Clinton’s cigar. With the Clintons literally moving into town, the terms of this political contract were non-negotiable: Get out of the way and you may keep your job. Thanks. Nita Lowey won the new 18th District in 2002 in a landslide, and had several lovely photo ops during 2000 and 2002 with the Senator Hillary Clinton and Bill to go on her wall.
In conclusion, what to make of this requires speculation on facts. There are no answers to any of it in the heads of anyone but the Clintons and perhaps a few others, and 2000 is long gone. It should also be immediately noted that I am analyzing to the best of my ability, but this could all be bullshit. As I said in the prologue, it's up to you to make that determination for yourself. I'm just presenting the best picture I can. What I would like to leave all of this in the context of is the following:
What was the ultimate trade-off that was made? Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of four men who cost the taxpayers of this nation $30 million dollars in apparent exchange for a racial splint for his wife’s Senate campaign. That is the nature of the Clinton family politics, and it sets the pattern for the far, far more complex events like Whitewater.
Next: Hillary’s Formative Years.
Politics, Current Events: State of Affairs—The Rise and Run of Hillary Clinton: The Early Years
Politics, Current Events: State of Affairs—The Rise and Run of Hillary Clinton: Prologue