The business of lobbying
I was born and raised in Boro Park. I started off in a yeshivah called Bais Yehuda, which doesn’t exist anymore. It was run by the Debretziner Rav back in the 1970s. Then I went to Bais Shmuel for two years, which also doesn’t exist anymore, and then to Vien for a year. They didn’t have a post-bar mitzvah program, so I went to Bobov, where I remained throughout the years. The yeshivah was very neutral in those days. It was obviously a Bobover mesivta, but there were more non-Bobovers than Bobovers in my class. It was a melting pot.
“I’ve always had a very strong interest in history and current events. It started after reading about the historic march on Washington during World War II, when 400 rabbanim tried to ask FDR for help to stop the churban in Europe. I always wished that I could have been there. Then, as a teenager, I started writing letters to elected officials, asking them to work to prevent anti-Semitism and protect Jewish interests. I actually received several personal replies, including a long response from Senator Ted Kennedy.
“My career began with the mayoral election of 1989. I was 21 years old. David Dinkins was the Democratic nominee after defeating Ed Koch in the primary. Rudy Giuliani was the Republican nominee, and he almost won. He lost by two points. That was the first campaign in which I played a role and developed a rapport with a candidate. There are pictures of me in my biver hit with Giuliani on 13th Avenue. I remember introducing him to a gentleman by the name of Larry Reinhardt, and I brought in Sam Domb, who became one of his biggest donors.
“How did I get involved in the first place? I just picked up the phone and knocked on doors. I had a lot of time and patience. I was willing to do everything and anything just to get to know people, and I wasn’t as jaded and cut-straight-to-the-chase as I am today.
“I was single and lived with my parents. I had no expenses and went to fancy dinners every night. I used to joke that I could live on $7 a day; I’m not a spender. People call me very stingy, actually. It’s funny, because if I had gotten married then, I would have been in big trouble, as I wouldn’t have had the time to develop my expertise. Until I was 30, my parents gave me $40 a week spending money because they felt bad for me.
“Every day I would think of new ideas and ways to make money. One day I was a stockbroker and the next day a real estate broker. I once invested in a certain stock and it quadrupled. I should have sold it, but it tanked before I got out. There was a period when I maxed out my credit cards, but I paid every dollar back. I didn’t want to have bad credit.
“The first person to officially hire me as a consultant was Norman A. Dawidowicz of Personal Capital Management—whose name I probably haven’t uttered in 30 years. ‘Ezra,’ he told me, ‘you’re going to do PR for me, and you’re going to charge me. And I insist that you write a contract.’ It gave me a sense of accomplishment. One of my other early contracts was Laniado Hospital.
“I wanted to get ahead in the political world and develop relationships. It wasn’t until my mid-30s that I began focusing on money. Rabbi Yankel Bronner, who was my mentor at the time, gave me direction. He would say, ‘Hust gemacht a pur dollar fun dem? Did you make a few dollars from it?’ He hired me and structured my approach. Once I was on the right track, I stayed on it.
“I worked for Mark Green, the first public advocate of New York City, for four years. I was all over the place—I worked for him, but I wanted to do 1,000 other things at the same time, so he didn’t want to rehire me for the second term. It bothered me, but I didn’t want to make enemies.
“Then he lost the mayoral election right after 9/11 to Michael Bloomberg. The conventional wisdom had been that if Mark Green won the election, I would work at City Hall. In retrospect, it was probably good for me that he lost. Often what a person thinks is the worst thing that could happen is actually the best. I would have wanted to be a big macher in City Hall, and if I had stayed in government, it would have been very hard to transfer into the private sector. So I decided to open the Friedlander Group. That was in 2001.
“My first client was the city of Beitar Illit. Yitzchak Pindrus, who is now a member of Knesset, had been elected mayor that November, and he had heard that I was involved in the election in New York City. He wanted to establish the Beitar Foundation and hired me to do PR. His people wanted me to set up a meeting between him and Mayor Bloomberg. They didn’t know that I had worked for his opponent. I just said, ‘A meeting? Sure!’
“I have everlasting hakaras hatov to Jonathan Greenspun, who is also a lobbyist now but had worked on Bloomberg’s campaign. I called him and said, ‘Jonathan, I need a favor from you. I have a new client, the mayor of Beitar Illit. Could you arrange a photo op with Mike Bloomberg?’ I expected him to refuse, but he said, ‘I’ll try. Call me back in a week.’
“When I called back, he said, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do for you. This mayor doesn’t have an office; he works in a ‘bullpen’—a cubicle in an open space along with his top 20 officials. You’ll come at a time when I know he’s there. I’ll call him out, you’ll take a few pictures, and you’ll say it was a meeting.’ I replied, ‘You just made my life, because now I have something to show.’
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