"...if you Google "Paul Findley defeat", you'll learn that he was a member of Congress for 22 years until being defeated by Democrat Dick Durbin in 1984 following a re-districting that put more Democrats in the district (Findley was a Republican.) While most observers credited Findley's defeat to the makeup of the district, he's convinced that the Israeli lobby was behind it, and he's apparently been obsessed with AIPAC ever since. Pro-Jewish groups did contribute to Durbin's campaign..."
from the new yorker, 7/4/05:
AIPAC, Asher explained, is loyal to its friends and merciless to its enemies. In 1982, Asher led a campaign to defeat Paul Findley, a Republican congressman from Springfield, Illinois, who once referred to himself as Yasir Arafat's best friend in Congress, and who later compared Arafat to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
There was a real desire to help Findley out of Congress, Asher said. He identified an obscure Democratic lawyer in Springfield, Richard Durbin, as someone who could defeat Findley. "We met at my apartment in Chicago, and I recruited him to run for Congress, he recalled. "I probed his views and I explained things that I had learned mostly from AIPAC. I wanted to make sure we were supporting someone who was not only against Paul Findley but also a friend of Israel.
Asher went on, "He beat Findley with a lot of help from Jews, in-state and out-of-state. Now, how did the Jewish money find him? I travelled around the country talking about how we had the opportunity to defeat someone unfriendly to Israel. And the gates opened. Durbin, who went on to win a Senate seat, is now the Democratic whip. He is a fierce critic of Bush's Iraq policy but, like AIPAC, generally supports the Administration's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "
ah rest mah case...
fs