Rand who? GOP hawks look past Paul At the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting, seldom was heard a disparaging word.

LAS VEGAS — When the Republican Jewish Coalition met here last year, Rand Paul’s non-interventionist views and isolationist positioning put him at the center of conversation.

But not this time around. As members of the influential organization — funded by some of the wealthiest pro-Israel members of the GOP — gathered at the posh Venetian hotel this weekend, Paul was an afterthought.


There was no public mention of the Kentucky senator’s name and no veiled criticism from the podium.

The reason, according to interviews with attendees, is that the perceived threat level posed by Paul suddenly seems diminished. He’s made moves to placate concerns about his views on defense spending and foreign aid to Israel. And in a field stocked with hawkish candidates, unquestioned in their commitment to Israel, Paul still occupies a space in the middle of the pack, trailing other contenders whose views are much more in line with RJC thinking.

On Thursday, the group’s biggest donors gathered for a private dinner at the home of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire megadonor and RJC board member who poured $100 million into the 2012 campaign, for a discussion about the presidential race. Paul’s name, said two people in attendance, never came up.

It’s a surprising development for a group that’s long been suspicious of the Kentucky senator. In 2013, Matt Brooks, the RJC’s longtime executive director, criticized Paul for employing an aide who had expressed pro-Confederacy views. During his 2010 Senate campaign, Brooks called Paul a “neo-isolationist” and said he was “outside the comfort level of a lot of people in the Jewish community.”

To some, the lack of attention to Paul at this year’s event was simply a reflection of the current 2016 GOP pecking order. He’s been surpassed in early polling by a group of more outwardly pro-Israel candidates, such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

“I don’t think there’s a feeling that there’s a train out there that you have to stop,” said former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, who sits on the RJC’s board of directors. “If he was the 800-pound gorilla out there,” maybe there would be more of a desire to oppose Paul, he added. “But it’s a big field.”

Others point out that this year’s crop of presidential contenders features a plethora of viable pro-defense candidates — all of whom will combine to block Paul out. On Saturday, two of those candidates, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, took the stage to deliver impassioned speeches in support of Israel and brought the audience to its feet.

“There are some people you can talk to here who will tell you there are seven different candidates they’re happy with,” said New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, the lone Jewish Republican member of the House. “They see several viable options for themselves.”

In recent months, Paul has worked overtime to smooth his frayed relations with the hawkish wing of the Republican Party. Once a vigorous critic of defense spending, Paul recently proposed an amendment to boost the Pentagon’s budget by about $190 billion over the next two years. His campaign website prominently features a page titled “Rand Paul stands with Israel.”

Ari Fleischer, who served as a press secretary in the George W. Bush White House and now sits on the RJC board, pointed out that Paul attended an event the coalition held last year. “He’s moderated his views,” Fleischer said.

Adelson himself is lukewarm on the prospect of attacking Paul. In recent weeks, he’s told friends privately that he wasn’t behind a seven-figure, neoconservative-funded ad campaign blasting the Kentucky senator. And in March he met privately with Paul. The senator emerged to say that the mogul had provided him with reassurances that he wouldn’t target him.

Still, there are tensions. Paul declined an invitation to the event, choosing instead to spend the weekend stumping in Iowa. He dispatched an aide, Vincent Harris, to the confab, which was attended by around 800 donors and activists. “Senator Paul has a great relationship with RJC and has attended their events previously and looks forward to doing so again soon,” Doug Stafford, a Paul adviser, said in an email.

Yet even as Paul presents himself as a friend of Israel, Fleischer said, there are questions about his views on American intervention abroad, a subject that is front and center with RJC members.

“Rand Paul is cut from a different cloth,” he said. “I think it’s hard for him.”

The weekend event, held adjacent to the casino floor of the Venetian, Adelson’s mammoth, 36-floor, 4,000-room hotel on the Las Vegas strip, sometimes seemed an awkward tableau for a serious discussion of American foreign policy and the use of force overseas. Prominent Republican donors, including philanthropist Larry Mizel and real estate developer David Flaum, shuttled through the hallways to private meetings and lunches past boisterous, T-shirt- and flip-flop-wearing tourists and gamblers.

Much of the proceedings was shrouded in secrecy. Organizers only allowed reporters access to speeches by a handful of politicians, barring them from presentations by former President George W. Bush, House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Journalists were also kept away from the closed-door meetings held by RJC members, with event officials kicking them off the floor where they were taking place.

Among those donors present, there wasn’t much desire to talk.

“I’m not really at the center of this,” Mizel, a Colorado billionaire who’s provided nearly $600,000 in contributions to federal candidates since 1998, according to campaign finance records, told a POLITICO reporter. “You should talk to some of these other people.”

Adelson, whose $32 billion net worth has made him one of the most sought-after Republican contributors, occupied center stage even if he wasn’t always present. At the Thursday dinner, he was toasted by Mitt Romney, who as the 2012 Republican nominee was the beneficiary of tens of millions of dollars of general election support from the casino executive.

Each of the presidential hopefuls who made their way to the Venetian sat for private meetings with the mogul in hopes of winning his support.

Among them was Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who was making his first foray as a potential 2016 aspirant. On Thursday, he attended the dinner at Adelson’s house and spoke with him briefly. The next morning, armed with pamphlets touting his “reinvention of Michigan,” he appeared before the RJC board and highlighted his efforts to turn around his state’s struggling economy.

On Saturday, it was South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s turn to huddle with Adelson. It was a topic the normally talkative Graham wasn’t in the mood to talk about.

“I met with Sheldon,” he said in an interview afterward. “The one thing I’ve learned about Sheldon is you tell people what you talked to Sheldon about, that’s not a good thing.”

Others used the occasion to collect cash. On Friday morning, Cruz was seen meeting with a group of donors at a restaurant next to the hotel’s faux Grand Canal, where tourists took gondola rides. That afternoon, former New York Gov. George Pataki convened a meeting with a group of top donors before appearing at a reception.

“Everyone is trying to figure out who’s here, who’s left, and who can make a commitment to them,” said Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan Republican Party chairman and Cruz supporter who was roaming the halls. Some donors, he added, are still in “the dating phase” and trying to figure out who to get behind.

While some deep-pocketed contributors are still trying to figure out who they’re for, others are still trying to determine who, or if, they’ll actively oppose a candidate.

“There’s a lot of time between now and whenever a Republican nominee is picked,” Zeldin said. “Any candidate right now in the field is capable of emerging with just about everyone here in Vegas doing everything they can to help that person win or doing or saying something that is an error in judgment that could risk everyone’s support.”