The American Spectator

Jack Abramoff, then a student at Brandeis University and College Republican state chairman of Massachusetts, was clearly one of the most outstanding of the 300 graduates of those two-day training schools.

I personally offered Jack one of our 30 field staff jobs.

Jack graciously declined and told me, “I’m going back to Massachusetts and organize enough students there to carry Massachusetts for Reagan.”

I laughed and replied, “Jack, if you carry Massachusetts for Reagan, we’ll win in a national landslide.”

He did, and we did. Governor Reagan beat President Jimmy Carter in Massachusetts by 2,421 votes. Jack’s campus effort garnered many more than that number of student absentee ballots for Reagan there.

The next year, partly on the strength of his remarkable success in winning Massachusetts for Reagan, Jack was elected chairman of the College Republican National Committee. There again he succeeded spectacularly.

In 1980, the number of College Republican (CR) clubs on the nation’s campuses had grown from 250 to 1,002. In 1981, Jack’s campus organizing efforts increased the number of CR clubs to 1,100 — a new record which remained unsurpassed until very recent years.

While a national CR officer, Jack widened his network of friends among conservative Republicans, impressing everyone. Jack was courageously conservative on all the issues: limited government, free enterprise, strong national defense, and traditional moral values.

Moreover, Jack obviously took his Orthodox Jewish faith seriously. He kept kosher. He would not travel on the Sabbath. He deplored profanity and vulgarity.

Jack dropped out of politics for some years to make movies, including at least one which had some worldwide success, an anti-Communist action drama titled Red Scorpion.

Then he returned to political activity and explained he had found that, without major financial resources, he couldn’t control his movies’ content because the industry inserted into them, against his will, gratuitous profanity and vulgarity.

Back in the political arena, Jack benefited greatly from the magnificent reputation he had earned. He had proved himself highly intelligent, highly principled, and highly competent. Clearly he was a hard worker and a talented leader.

He joined one of the best known and most successful legal and lobbying firms in the Washington, D.C., area. Because Jack had built a very wide circle of friends in the political process, those of us who had known him since the early 1980s expected him to be successful as a lobbyist.

He started up an Orthodox Jewish school and spent a lot of his own time and money on it. His reputation continued as clean as a hound’s tooth.

Fast forward to today. His reputation lies in tatters. The wealth he reportedly gained as a lobbyist may be eaten up entirely as a result of his legal problems. He’ll soon be broke — and in jail.