Eli Goldman
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His Excellency President Eli Goldman | |
|---|---|
| File:Eli Goldman pic 2.jpg President Goldman giving a talk at the 2015 Prestonian Energy Summit in March, 2015. | |
| President of Belhavia | |
| Assumed office January 21st, 2009 | |
| Preceded by | Jeff Arnoth |
| Imperial Senator from Freeport | |
| In office July 20th, 1998 – December 28th, 2008 | |
| Preceded by | David Horowitz |
| Succeeded by | Adam Green |
| Personal details | |
| Born | July 7th, 1968 Freeport City, Freeport |
| Nationality | Belhavian |
| Political party | Conservative Party |
| Spouse | Rebecca B. Goldman |
| Residence | Provisa |
| Alma mater | B.A., Political Science; History, Almania College J.D., Imperial Provisa University School of Law |
| Profession | Politician, Lawyer |
Eli A. Goldman, J.D. (born July 7th, 1968) is the current President of Belhavia and the former Imperial Senator from Freeport province. He is a member of the Conservative Party. He is a graduate of the private liberal arts Almania College and prestigious Imperial Provisa University School of Law.
Goldman stunned the political world by winning an open seat in the Imperial Senate in his home province of Freeport, where he was practicing corporate law, in a 1998 special Imperial Senate election, breaking a thirty-year losing streak for the Tories running for Imperial office in the province. Within a decade, under his leadership and aided by demographic changes in the voting populace, Freeport went from a solid Liberal Democrat bastion to a Conservative-leaning swing province at the local, provincial, and Imperial levels.
As an Imperial Senator, Goldman aligned with his party's leadership. He espoused a very conservative record on fiscal and economic issues, and hawkish views on foreign policy.
The Goldman presidency has been notable for an aggressive foreign policy of force projection abroad and a rigorous enforcement of the White Terror laws at home. The Goldman Doctrine established a zero-tolerance policy for actions against Belhavian citizens, interests, property, or territory by foes of Belhavia across the world, such as geopolitical organizations like PISC, or pariah states such as the Ankaran Union and Qaradamlar.
Domestically, Goldman successfully passed tax reform that cut the corporate and national sales tax rates, strengthened national oversight on education and kosher regulatory standards, and has generally been seen by the public at large as a competent manager and administrator.
His presidency has also seen a major and overarching modernization project of the Belhavian military unseen in its cost and scope since the Settas-Katz era.
Early Life and Education
Eli Adam Goldman was born in July 1968 to Shira and Naftali Goldman in the wealthy suburb of Avalon, Freeport. His family was traditional Conservadox, and he was raised in a family of three, with two sisters, Miriam and Chana. His father worked as an investment banker at Goldman, Black, and Richman Group in its senior management overseeing its fixed-income and bond market departments. His mother was a physicist who worked for a medical research firm in downtown Freeport City.
Goldman's life was leisurely and comfortable. He attended private and public Jewish day schools and yeshivas as he grew older, earning above-average but not exceptional grades. As he grew up, his parents pushed him to try out sports, and he played recreational Emmerian soccer, squash, and tennis, though he eventually dropped all three over time as he focused his attention to his studies and social life.
In his junior year at Avalon Yeshiva, he did a study abroad for 6 months at a Rodarian private Jewish yeshiva in Roşorii de Vede, Rodarion. However, he also travelled around, using his father's personal jet to take short trips to Emmeria, Belfras, the Western Confederacy, and Anthor on breaks. As a traditional observant Jew, he took a year off before college to study Gemara and Halakha at Beth Medrash Yeshiva in Netiyot, Arkania.
He then attended the prestigious and exclusive Almania College, where he studied political science and history. Since late high school, politics had begun to interest him, and he was attacted to the widespread popularity of (and the general prosperity of the late 1980s was credited to) President Julian Settas and his Tory party. In 1988, at age 20, he took a semester off to work on Naftali Katz's (ultimately successful) presidential campaign.
In 1990, he enrolled at Imperial Provisa University School of Law to earn his J.D. There, he joined the Royalist Society of Belhavia, an advocacy-based legal reform organization for conservatives and libertarians seeking to influence Belhavian law. He graduated in 1993 as a magna cum laude.
Lawyer & Early Career
After graduation, he underwent shidduchim (traditional Jewish dating), and was engaged to Rebecca Aronov after four months, marrying her three months later in a December 1993 wedding ceremony. As he dated, he came to his father's hedge fund, GBRG, where he worked as an in-house counsel in the firm's legal department. He generally did good work, and in his second year was given lead on a $236 million M&A deal, which he closed on-budget.
He later served as second chair in the firm's litigation legal unit, and he and his team won two cases in Imperial court and lost three others. After that, he transferred back to the transactional unit within the department, where he continued to write up financial contracts for firm clients. After three years, he and Rebecca had three children - two girls, Ruth and Miriam, and a boy, Yosef.
A staunch Conservative, Goldman threw numerous fundraisers for Tory candidates at the Goldman estate in Kings Hill, Provisa.
1998 Senate Campaign
After four years of legal work, Goldman grew tired of the law and focused more of his attention on politics. He and his family lived in Avalon, Freeport, a green province politically. Tory candidates running province-wide for provincial governor or Imperial Senate were approaching a thirty-year losing streak, with the last Tory, Senator Jacob Harpaz, narrowly losing re-election in 1968. The last Conservative Senate candidate to come anywhere close to winning was in 1984, at the height of the Settas Revolution, when the Liberal Democrat won by a ten-point margin, 55.1%-45.3%.
However, in the past 1996 presidential election, winning Tory nominee Yehuda Fiedler had won 47% of the vote in Freeport, a watershed high mark margin, after two decades of Conservatives garnering in the mid-30s. In November 1997, Lib Dem incumbent Senator David Horowitz, an outspoken liberal, resigned from his seat after he fell deathly ill and was relocated to a hospital to seek life-saving treatment. The Provisa establishment assumed the seat was safe for the Lib Dems, and a number of Liberal Democrats in Freeport jockeyed to run in the upcoming special election set for in July 1998.
Goldman thought he could be viable in a special election, which favored a more Jewish, older, conservative electorate. Several of his friends and allies encouraged him to run as well, wanting to put the seat in play for the Tories, considering the Senate was split by a single seat between the two major parties. After commissioning a private poll that showed him with a chance to win, he announced his candidacy on December 4th, 1997. Because the seat was viewed as heavily favored by the Lib Dems, he avoided a primary as no other potential Tory candidate was willing to run against him. By January 1998, the Lib Dem field had grown to five candidates, all serious contenders appealing to differing constituencies. They by and large dismissed Goldman as a weak Tory banker and wealthy scion who would be easily-beat in the general election.
Between December 1997 and March 1998, he had the general election field to himself: he fundraised, barnstormed, conducted town-hall meetings and rallies, and ran positive TV ads that increased his name recognition and favorable poll numbers while the Lib Dems battled it out in their primary. On April 4th, the Lib Dem nominee was Golda Danzinger, a Freeport City Councilwoman backed by the city's urban machine, the most powerful in the province. She won with 25.3%, followed by Provincial Attorney-General Jessie Goldstein with 21.7%, Provincial Treasurer Norm Glasser with 19.9%, wealthy liberal media personality Liam Noamsky with 16.8%, and self-funding businessman Oren Frum with 16.3%.
Bloodied by character and political attacks, and coffers nearly depleted, Danzinger launched a scorched-earth strategy at Goldman, accusing him of everything under the sun. He generally ignored her attacks, gaining positive media coverage for remaining above-the-fray and focused on substantive policy proposals. His father and allies at GBRG had set-up a Super-PAC, which spent both on positive spots boosting Goldman's image as well as bashing Danzinger. Her attacks generally flopped, inflicting negative press and turning off voters. In early May, he took the lead in a series of public polls, garnering in the mid-40s while she was pegged at the upper-30s. and politicians from across the Empire took note of the race and the potential "game-changer" it represented.
By late May, allies and outside interests from both sides poured in money to spend on attack ads. The race was on the political map for its unexpected closeness, and both candidates' favorable numbers tobbled as the attack ads took their toll. Danzinger's populist and anti-elitism charges seemed to stick with voters, and Goldman's attacks on her as being a corrupt urban machine politician likewise affected her standing.
In mid-June, both candidates were deadlocked in the polls. As they limped to the finish line, the press uncovered a scandal involving potential vote-buying by Danzinger on the Freeport city council, and it dominated the news coverage until election day. On July 5th, 1998, Goldman bested Danzinger by a 56.2%-43.7% margin, ending the Tories' 30-year losing streak. On July 20th, he was seated in the Senate.