Joel Pollak's Run For Congress

Just got back from Chicago to help my friend, Joel Pollak, fight against incumbent Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. What follows are my reflections from my time helping him and should not, in any way, be seen as coming from his campaign.

Pollak lost, as many thought he would -- this was, after all a D+20 -- but with his head held high and with an eye towards going through the whole process again. Of course, I should say that I, like everyone else, lacks insider information on this point, but I doubt very much that this is the last of Joel Pollak as citizen politician. He'll be back, though whether or not it'll be in the 9th congressional district is anyone's guess.

Men don't run for Congress to win. They run because it is their duty -- indeed a calling -- and Joel has done his duty for the people that raised him against an adversary that lied over and over again and that flouted the spirit, if not the letter, of election law when she promised an election judge in Des Plaines, Illinois help in getting a congressional internship and gave election judges candy and announced herself to voters in polling places. Yes, I witnessed both with my own eyes. Meanwhile, Joel, time and again, instructed his volunteers to conduct the most ethical of campaigns. At every polling place he visited, he asked the judges where the boundaries of the polling place was and kept to it. 

Of course, Schakowsky would have won anyways -- though probably in a smaller than two-to-one throttling -- given the hostile nature with which the local media treated Joel.  The local -- and national -- media seemed to be a bit obsessed with the Jew-on-Jew nature of the congressional campaign. Of course, Joel, who is an Orthodox Jew, never really mentioned that. Time and again, he mentioned jobs, jobs, and jobs. When others -- myself included -- encouraged him to play up the parallels between himself and Schakowsky on national security questions, he refused, rightly noting that it was all about the economy, not Israel.

Ironically, that position has now been caricatured by Schakowsky who is trying to paint Joel as something of an Israel zealot, which he never was. Not to say he's not a strong supporter of Israel -- he is -- but he never did run as someone dismissively said as "Tel Aviv's congressman." Such language is frankly pretty offensive, suggesting as it does that Jews cannot be full Americans. I understand that Schakowsky is going about playing up the results of a horrendously biased poll that shows she had broad support from Jews, but so what? Pollak ran to represent the entire 9th congressional district.

To Joel's credit, he did do something amazing: he worried Schakowsky, who, in palmier days has been something of the bane of existence for conservatives across the country, given her genuflecting liberalism and financial support of so-called "conservative" Democrats. One of those supposed conservative Democrats is the not very conservative at all, Melissa Bean, who looks to be defeated by Joe Walsh in what is perhaps one of the largest upsets of this election. (He is currently leading with 600 votes.) He should thank Joel for keeping Schakowsky worried.