Arthur J. Finkelstein (born 1946) is a United States Republican Party political operative. He has directed a series of campaigns, considered to be quite successful, to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel in the past 25 years. He runs Arthur J. Finkelstein and Associates, a political consulting firm based in Irvington, New York, which handles his clients.

Professional history
Finkelstein is known for his hard-edged political campaigns, which often focus on hammering home a single message with great repetition. He is credited with helping to make "liberal" a dirty word in the late 1980s and 1990s by using commercial messages like this, intended to damage Jack Reed's image:
That's liberal. That's Jack Reed. That's wrong. Call liberal Jack Reed and tell him his record on welfare is just too liberal for you.
While often successful, Finkelstein's tactics have sometimes backfired -- such as in 1996, where his repeated attacks against Wellstone had the effect of galvanizing Wellstone's liberal grass-roots base. Republican U.S. Senator Rod Grams had to eventually condemn Finkelstein's negative ads against Wellstone for being excessive.
Finkelstein's early style is described in an account of a Congressional primary race in Arizona (Thomas W. Benson. "Another Shooting in Cowtown." Quarterly Journal of Speech 67 (1981): 347-406.)

Campaign style
Finkelstein has worked for many politicians in a number of positions:

National Liberal Party (Romania)
Former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms
Former U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato
Former U.S. Senator Rudy Boschwitz
New York Governor George Pataki
Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan
Former U.S. President Richard Nixon
Former U.S. Senator Bob Dole
Terry Dolan's the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC)
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
Former U.S. Senator Lauch Faircloth
Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman
Former U.S. Senator Don Nickles
Former U.S. Senator Bob Smith
Romanian Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum
Florida Congressman Connie Mack IV
Time magazine
Scott Paper
McDonalds
Quaker Oats
The Trump Organization
The opponents of the new stadium on the West Side of Manhattan Current and former clients
In 1996, Boston Magazine outed Finkelstein as a homosexual in a feature story. In April 2005, Finkelstein acknowledged that in December, 2004, he had married his long time partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts.

Homosexuality
In April 2005, Finkelstein organized a political action committee (PAC) called Stop Her Now with the stated goal, "to shed light on the REAL Hillary Clinton and the danger she and her ideas pose for America." The PAC planned to raise ten million dollars to defeat Clinton in the 2006 New York U.S. Senate race, thereby making a potential 2008 presidential run less likely. However, the PAC showed barely any activity [1], had no effect on the Senate race, and Clinton was easily re-elected by a wide margin. After the 2006 election, the PAC and website have since been taken over by Dallas businessman Richard Collins [2].

Happening right now

"Stupid people say stupid things." (Said to the Hebrew language paper Maariv in 1999)