The Cry Being Heard Around Washington: 'I Need a Netanyahu Ticket'

Washington:

For Sen. Lindsey Graham, the only ticket more in demand than a seat inside the House chamber for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress on Tuesday morning would be "if it was Garth Brooks - maybe."

"I'm having to tell people who supported me for decades I can't find a ticket," said Graham, R-S.C., after referring to the country music star. "If I had 100 tickets, I'd be the most popular guy in town."

But, alas, Graham - like almost every member of Congress - has just one ticket to dole out to a constituent, lobbyist or donor eager to hear Netanyahu make his case for opposing the Obama administration's nuclear talks with Iran. And supply is fast outpacing demand for what lawmaker after lawmaker called "the hottest ticket in town."

How hot?

"The tickets are hotter than fresh latkes," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.

Perhaps only in Washington would a fight over the fine points of nuclear policy and defense strategy be such a draw. There is drama: House Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, invited Netanyahu without first consulting the White House. There is friction: Relations between the United States and Israeli governments are frayed. There is calculation: Netanyahu is commanding the global stage just two weeks before he stands for re-election. And there is coincidence: The speech takes place at the same time as the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

"It's a major event at a major time in a critical area of the world that now has the added intrigue of D.C. politics," said Jeff Forbes, a founding partner at Forbes-Tate, a public policy consulting firm.

Forbes added that his office had been getting requests from people "of all walks of life." The firm's response: "We'll try. Sorry, but it's in the hottest ticket in town."

Graham said the White House's "desire to undercut" Netanyahu's visit had simply made it more appealing.

"They have made it the most talked about thing in Washington, and I think it blew up in their face," Graham said. "Everything he says, people want to hear, and people want to be in that room to listen, they want to be in person. It's become a historic speech."

Boehner's office said it had received requests for 10 times as many tickets as there are available seats in the gallery, and both the House and the Senate have set up alternate viewing locations that will also require tickets. There will be heightened security throughout the Capitol complex, according to the Capitol police.

Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House, and Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate, are both expected to attend as Boehner's guests.

"If Taylor Swift and Katy Perry did a joint concert at Madison Square Garden wearing white-and-gold and black-and-blue dresses, accompanied by dancing sharks and llamas,  that's the only way you'd have a tougher ticket," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner.

Similarly, Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, said, "If I was solely responsible for filling the gallery, it would have been filled up in a New York minute."

"I have people all day, every day, contacting me as if there's a hundred thousand seats just vacant," he said. "It's a historic time for Israel, for America, for the stability of the Middle East, and I think that people see that historic moment on March 3 and want to be part of it."

The interest, Zeldin noted wryly, represented a change from President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, for which the congressman had to seek out a guest to invite.

"No one asked to be my guest," he said.

Even Democrats, some of whom are not attending the speech in order to express their frustration over what they say is the politicization of Netanyahu's address, are hanging on to their tickets, distributing them as though they were a form of valuable currency.

Several dozen House Democrats, for instance, were recently sitting around a table, debating whether to attend the speech. Most said they planned to boycott to make a political point. But then, according to one lawmaker, each of them asked: "But do you have any extra guest tickets?"

Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., will not attend the speech, but has promised his gallery seat to a constituent who is in town for the AIPAC conference.

"I don't know whether it's because he loves Netanyahu or he's excited to see a joint session of Congress," Yarmuth said. "It could be either one."

And Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., said he had not decided whether to attend, but had already taken a call from a colleague - Rep. Dan Benishek, R-Mich. - about whether his ticket was available. (It was not. Lowenthal had already promised it to a constituent.)

But, Lowenthal joked, he was happy to offer his seat on the House floor should he skip the speech.

"They could say they're me, and I could give them this," he said, reaching into his wallet and pulling out his electronic voting card.

Of course, not every office has fielded the same volume of calls. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said that while the speech was "a pretty big deal," he had not been inundated with requests.

"Of course, from a South Dakota standpoint, we don't have a really large Jewish community," he said. "In fact, I always tell people that when I want to get advice on those issues, I talk to my Jewish community - I talk to the Rosenthals and the Adelsteins."

But Thune seems to be an exception.

And all the lobbying and appeals for tickets, some aides said, already had them thinking of the next big joint meeting of Congress, which might require divine intervention to score a seat - Pope Francis' address in September.