of his clients for 20 years ... These days, Finkelstein is exercising a kind of remote control. The Senator's latest brain trust is dominated by "Arthur's Boys" ... And Dole is rushing around the country chanting the Finkelstein mantra. "Liberal! Liberal! Liberal!" he cried in St. Louis, Missouri. His own statewide clients in 1996 showed a mixed record, with Senator Larry Pressler (South Dakota) and ex-Senator Rudy Boschwitz (Minnesota) both losing, albeit in close races. Bob Smith survived with a 49% plurality win. New Jersey Congressman Dick Zimmer was defeated in his Senate bid against Robert Torricelli.Earlier in 1996, he also helped Benjamin Netanyahu oust Shimon Peres as Prime Minister of Israel in a close upset. According to The Jerusalem Post, "Finkelstein was largely responsible for the strategy that brought Netanyahu victory in the 1996 general elections." According to the Times of Israel, "Finkelstein was behind the "Peres will divide Jerusalem" slogan that helped Netanyahu overcome Shimon Peres who had been forecast to sweep to power in the wake of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin the previous November. That election was credited with changing the tone of Israeli campaigns, bringing more American-style, aggressive and negative campaigning to Israel." But his expertise helped in subtler ways as well; biographer Neill Lochery wrote in 2016 that Finkelstein was behind such ideas as dyeing Netanyahu's salt-and-pepper hair gray to give him a more statesmanlike appearance. Jeff Barak of The Jerusalem Post, a harsh critic of Finkelstein and Netanyahu, called the strategist "the brains behind Netanyahu's first election victory in 1996. Netanyahu's campaign back then, from which he has never wavered, was that you're either for him or an enemy of the people. His campaign slogan at the time, 'Netanyahu is good for the Jews,' encapsulated this. By implication, if you're not for Netanyahu then you're not good for the Jews, and therefore an enemy. And if Netanyahu is good for the Jews, then this also not-so-subtly hints that Netanyahu's bad for the Arabs, regardless of the fact that they are supposedly citizens of equal standing who comprise around 20% of the country's population." Finkelstein's greatest personal challenge that year came with the August issue of Boston magazine, which revealed his private life as a homosexual; the ostensible excuse for the outing was that several Finkelstein clients had voted against gay-rights measures in Congress, and his work to elect them was therefore inconsistent and/or