SOME of us struggle through high school or college trying to figure out what to be when we grow up. Some are still wrestling with that question well past middle age.
Not William Daroff.
He set out on his career path at the age of seven.
A self-described precocious kid, he had a collection of business cards, many of which he would gather from storefront businesses near his Miami-area home. One day, he stopped in the office of an attorney who happened to be running for village council.
That afternoon, the youthful Daroff came home not only with a business card, but literature and bumper stickers, and found himself strangely fascinated.
I saw him the next day and asked him if I could come and volunteer, says the adult version of Daroff who, as vice president for public policy and Washington office director of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), is the main lobbyist for 157 federations and 400 independent Jewish communities.
And I did. I went door to door in my neighborhood, this little seven-year-old kid, and people thought it was my father who was the candidate. Why else would a kid be distributing literature?
When he was elected, I started attending village council meetings and really caught the political and governmental bug.
Daroff, in Denver last week to consult with leaders of the Allied Jewish Federation, including members of its coordinating council, may not have quite understood at the age of seven why the political process fascinated him.
But he certainly does now.
Its a lot of things, he said in a hurried but substantive interview with the Intermountain Jewish News.
One is the impact that any individual can have on the lives of people; the idea that one legislator, one political volunteer, one statesperson can really change the course of human history, or village history.
A man who spent his childhood in the midst of the Cold War, Daroff says, I always thought it was important that we have this amazing privilege of being able to decide what our future would look like which those who were behind the Iron Curtain didnt have.
Secondly, he continues, as Ive gotten older, I like the game of it. I like seeing how things work, trying to assess and predict the future and really to know that if you have a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge of the political process, you can enjoy the ups and downs and sideways of it.
Daroff has seen plenty of government and politics from all angles and hes yet to tire of the game.
The holder of a Juris Doctorate from Case Western Reserve, he has served on the presidential campaigns of Cong. Jack Kemp, then-Vice President George H. Bush and Sen. Bob Dole. He was a political appointee in the Department of Energy under the first President Bush and was special assistant to former Ohio Governor George Voinovich.
During the years of his law practice, he focused on public law, advising corporations on their relationships with governments and counseling governments on legal issues.
He has served in his current position with JFNA since 2005, and has relied on an extensive background in Jewish community volunteer and activist work to inform his career as a lobbyist.
Most of his work is focused on domestic Jewish concerns, although JFNA does not totally surrender the question of US-Israeli relations to AIPAC, the acknowledged lobby for that bailiwick.
AIPAC is clearly, I think, the mainstream movement, lobbying outfit, as relates to Capitol Hill and the administration, Daroff says.
We are involved, though, and engaged in the US-Israel relationship in Iran as well as attempting to derail the assault on Israels legitimacy.
Were in the game. We work closely with AIPAC and the other Jewish organizations that are involved.
In any case, he adds, the domestic plate is sufficiently full to keep Daroff and JFNA busy, and is likely soon to grow even more challenging, he says.
He regularly speaks to Washington legislators on what amounts to a central concern for JFNA helping non-profit social service agencies survive in an increasingly strained economy.
That gets into the nitty-gritty of such issues as providing state fiscal relief, creating charitable tax incentives, securing job retraining funds, offering community service opportunities, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, protecting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare and the health safety net.
THE biggest issue were dealing with is the coming tsunami of aging and retiring and the impact that that will have on our nations social service infrastructure, Daroff says.
The country is not prepared for it and the Jewish community, frankly, is not as prepared for it as it should be.
As a Jewish community, were aging faster than the non-Jewish community, demographically, because of our lower birthrate.
Were coming upon these issues faster than the non-Jewish community. As a consequence were trying to tackle these aging issues with innovative public policy procedures and processes, and are trying to bring government along with us.
JFNA, for example, is an enthusiastic supporter of federal funding for the NORC concept naturally occurring retirement communities currently being tried in Denver.
NORCs, Daroff believes, are an effective means of allowing people to age in place, as opposed to institutionalization, in the conviction that it results in higher quality of life and longer life.
We also go to long-term care issues which are how we as a society, how we as children of parents, how we as people who are aging, will afford long-term care. Thats another huge albatross around our society, Daroff says.
Daroff is also spending a lot of time on public policy that relates to the charitable sector in general, working to ensure that government policy remains supportive of the crucial work that non-profits, such as Jewish federation, perform.
The Jewish federations are the second largest non-profit network in North America, second to United Way, Daroff says. As a consequence, when a comma becomes a semicolon or a hyphen becomes a colon, it can have great impact on our ability to raise money, on our ability to spend money, to allocate funds for people who are in need.
The general idea, he explains, is that government can and should play a major role in encouraging citizens largely through tax incentives to take money out of their pockets and put it into non-profit pockets.
If theres one thing weve learned from this recession, or from Hurricane Katrina, Daroff points out, its that government cant do these things alone, that they need non-profits and charities to be there, partnering with them.
MANY of the things Daroff will be asking for, he acknowledges, may run against the current political tide.
With Republicans, including Tea Party advocates, expected to make substantial gains in November, the conservative sentiments of anti-spending, anti-deficit and anti-entitlements will make Daroffs job more difficult.
With the deficit spending the way it is, we anticipate that this is something were going to have to play some major defense on, he says.
I am concerned that this anti-spending environment, whether Republicans win majorities or come close, will have great impact on funding for social service agencies generally.
One thing that we offer are innovative programs that can bring together folks from both sides of the aisle in order to push forward policies that will help to make lives better for people.
Although he long identified himself personally as a Republican, Daroff now calls himself post-partisan and advocates bipartisan solutions to some of his most important issues.
The NORCs that were approved in Colorado were done with a Republican senator and a Democratic House member, so a lot of our policies are ones that we think are cross-cutting and can bring both sides of the aisle together.
But clearly, whenever theres any sort of change, it adds some uncertainty. Im not certain generally how much the Congressional agenda will move forward.
With the need for a 60-seat majority to get anything done in the Senate, and with presumably a majority or near-majority of Republicans in the House, I think this next session wont be one with a lot of legislative action. But it will be interesting to see how all the players respond.
REGARDLESS of the outcome, Daroff will be doing the bread-and-butter work of acquainting himself with new senators and representatives, and introducing them to Jewish federations, a reality many political newcomers may know little or nothing about.
Weve been meeting with candidates across the board, he says, trying to show them the services we provide and the positive impact that Jewish communal agencies have on the lives of people as well as innovative public-private partnership programs. Its a communication you need with any new members of Congress.
There are folks from the Jewish community who are literally in every state and who have relationships a doctor, a pharmacist, a neighbor that we can leverage to get in the door.
Once in the door, he says, its all about establishing a personal relationship with the politician.
Politics and government affairs is all about personal relationships and trust, Daroff says.
The most important relationships are the well-established ones, with veteran senators and representatives, whose memberships on important committees and general influence grow with the length of their service. With freshmen, its beginning a process.
Which doesnt mean that Daroff is taking this years newcomers lightly.
If there are the sort of Republican pick-ups theyre talking about, this would be a very strong freshman class, he says, and one that will probably be a little anxious and antsy to move forward their agenda.
DAROFF is not exclusively a political animal.
He has other interests, such as his family, his affection for whom is a major reason why he has never sought political office for himself.
Serving in an elected office, he says simply, is a lifestyle thats not conducive to family.
He is also fascinated with hi-tech, especially social networking. In a recent feature article, JTA referred to Daroff as a social networking evangelist because of his enthusiasm for, and frequent use of, Twitter.
I got into social networking very early, he says, early enough to be engaged with it and to see how amazingly small it makes the world, particularly Twitter.
The ability to communicate with thousands of people, to have relationships with thousands of people and to really build a movement and push a message, is something that I find remarkable.
The ease and immediacy of such modern communications, he gushes, is unparalleled in human history.
Daroff is also a student of the troubled history of Eastern European Jewry and the Holocaust. He initially studied Holocaust history under Professor Susannah Heschel, daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
He later earned a certificate in the subject from Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland, where he met his wife, who was a fellow student.
For the past several years, he has served as a presidential appointee to the US Commission for the Preservation of Americas Heritage Abroad, which oversees, protects and preserves such European properties as Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and memorials.
A lot of my Jewish identity started from looking at and studying the Holocaust, Daroff says.
The plight of European Jewry is part of my identity as a Jew and a part of why I am motivated to try to make the world a better place for Jews and for everybody, particularly on Jewish survival and continuity issues.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
