by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

July 31, 2008

He has been a Jewish student leader, a Democratic activist, and a candidate for elective office. Now, at 41, Ben Dworkin has been tapped for one of the state’s most visible perches for political analysis and commentary.

As of July 1, the Teaneck resident became the new director of the Rider Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University in Lawrenceville and an adjunct assistant professor of political science.

Dworkin succeeds David Rebovich, who died of a sudden heart attack last October at the age of 58 and in whose memory the institute will be renamed. Rebovich was often described as the state’s most-quoted political analyst, and one political Web site already has written that Dworkin has “big shoes to fill.”

Dworkin acknowledged that Rebovich was the “gold standard” among state analysts, but said he is up to the challenge.

In addition to providing commentary, he said, he plans to bring speakers to campus and encourage students to participate in the political process.

“I want to help them understand that NJ politics may be a full-contact sport, but it is a lot of fun and there are tremendous issues at stake,” said Dworkin, who also teaches at Rutgers University while working on his doctoral degree in political science there. “You need to be involved or someone else will make the decisions for you,” he tells students.

The new position at Rider, he said, “pulls together a lot of things I have done in my life.”

He developed a love for electoral politics as a student at Bergenfield High School. Inspired by his late father, Moshe, a founder of the UJA Federation of Bergen County, he became active in Young Judaea, Hadassah’s youth group, and was elected its national president.

That experience, he said, “definitely contributed a lot of the skills I use as a professor and that I have used in politics and communications.”

After high school Dworkin spent a year in Israel on a work-study program, then returned to attend Princeton University. There he majored in political science and was active in Hillel and the campus chapter of American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

As an undergraduate, Dworkin was president of the College Democrats and received his first exposure to the turbulent world of a U.S. Senate run as a campaign aide to a Delaware Democrat named S.B. Woo.

“It was a blast,” he recalled, even if Woo did lose to Republican William Roth.

“My first true political mentor was the late Matty Feldman,” the powerful Bergen County Democrat who served for 23 years in the State Senate and who, as mayor of Teaneck, advanced the integration of the township’s schools.

“I worked in his office in Teaneck while I was in college, and after graduation I took a full-time job in his office,” said Dworkin. He later received a master’s degree at Rutgers’ Eagleton Institute of Politics, and held a fulltime job with the State Assembly Democrats in Trenton.

Dworkin also made a run for the Teaneck Town Council; it “didn’t work out,” he said, but it taught him a lot about running a campaign.

For several years, he has been running a newsletter publishing company in Englewood Cliffs.

“Working in politics was great,” said Dworkin, “but at a certain point I needed to make a different kind of living. I needed to be able to afford Teaneck,” where he lives with his wife, Amy Winn-Dworkin, and their two-year-old daughter, Miranda.

‘It’s a trifecta’

He foresees no problems as he moves from being a partisan activist to an academically neutral observer of electoral politics.

In his new role, he is already hard at work sizing up the presidential campaign and its impact on NJ voters.

“In my new position I am going to be an impartial commentator, like Tim Russert and George Stephanopoulos,” he said, referring to two media analysts who had begun as Democratic activists. In fact, he said, he believes his involvement in politics made him “a great candidate” for the position at Rider.

In his new role, he is already hard at work sizing up the presidential campaign and its impact on NJ voters.

“It is clear to me that Obama should win New Jersey; it is a Democratic year,” he said, noting that “eight years of a Republican presidency, an unpopular war, and a lousy economy help the party that is not in power. It’s a trifecta.”

Additionally, Obama’s financial resources give him an edge over Republican John McCain in the costly media markets of New York and Philadelphia. “You’ve got to advertise on the Today show,” he said. “You’ve got to be on prime time. Being on cable, you just don’t reach as many people.”

But, Dworkin hastened to add, he has “no doubt the Democrats can still mess up.”

As far as the state’s Jewish voters are concerned, Dworkin predicted: “We will see in November that 75 percent of the Jewish community still voted for Barack Obama over John McCain. That wouldn’t necessarily be the numbers today, but in the end Jewish voters have been a base vote for the Democratic Party.”

As far as Obama’s race affecting people’s choice for president, Dworkin said, “There are people in this country who will not vote for a black man, and there were people who wouldn’t vote for Joe Lieberman when he ran for vice president. Within every community you have people who are prejudiced, and I don’t know whether Jews are any different from any other group.”

--TOP--

Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com