Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton's Campaign
www.villagevoice.com/
A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton's Campaign
Sleeping With the GOP
by Wayne Barrett with special reporting by Adam Hutton
and Christine Lagorio
February 5th, 2004 8:20 AM
Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led
the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make
George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and
orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.
Though Stone and Sharpton have tried to reduce their alliance to a
curiosity, suggesting that all they do is talk occasionally, a Voice
investigation has documented an extraordinary array of connections.
Stone played a pivotal role in putting together Sharpton's pending
application for federal matching funds, getting dollars in critical
states from family members and political allies at odds with
everything Sharpton represents. He's also helped stack the campaign
with a half-dozen incongruous top aides who've worked for him in
prior campaigns. He's even boasted about engineering six-figure
loans to Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) and allowing
Sharpton to use his credit card to cover thousands in NAN
costs-neither of which he could legally do for the campaign. In a
wide-ranging Voice interview Sunday, Stone confirmed his matching- fund
and staffing roles, but refused to comment on the NAN
subsidies.
Sharpton denounced the Voice's inquiries as "phony liberal
paternalism," insisting that he'd "talk to anyone I want" and
likening his use of Stone to Bill Clinton's reliance on pollster
Dick Morris, saying he was "sick of these racist double standards."
He did not dispute that Stone had helped generate matching
contributions and staff the campaign. Asked about the Stone loans,
he conceded that he "asked him to help NAN," but attributed the
financial aid to his and Stone's joint "fight against the
Rockefeller drug laws," adding: "If he did let me use his credit
card to cover NAN expenses, fine." The finances of NAN and the
Sharpton campaign have so merged in recent months that they have
shared everything from contractors to consultants to travel
expenses, though Sharpton insists that these questionable maneuvers
have been done in compliance with Federal Election Commission
regulations.
Stone's Miami-based Fairbanks Limited also set up an e-mail service
called Sharpton-at-the-beach, which has issued dozens of releases
highlighting campaign achievements before news of them was posted on
the campaign website. His impact on strategy even included giving
Sharpton the ax handle he wielded at the July NAACP convention,
which Sharpton used as a symbol of former Georgia Democratic
governor Lester Maddox, who became famous in the '60s by chasing
blacks from his restaurant with one. Sharpton stirred the crowd,
yelling from the podium: "Anytime we can give a party 92 percent of
our vote and have to still beg some people to come talk to us, there
is still an ax-handle mentality among some in the Democratic Party."
Sharpton said he doesn't remember whether Stone gave him the ax
handle. Stone declined to comment, but has boasted to friends that
he came up with the theatrics.
Recruited in 2000 by his friend James Baker, the former secretary of
state, to spearhead the GOP street forces in Miami, Stone is
apparently confident that he can use the Democrat-bashing preacher
to damage the party's eventual nominee, just as Sharpton himself
bragged he did in the New York mayoral campaign of 2001. In his 2002
book, Al on America, Sharpton wrote that he felt the city's
Democratic Party "had to be taught a lesson" in 2001-insisting that
Mark Green, who defeated the Sharpton-backed Fernando Ferrer in a
bitter runoff, had disrespected him and minorities. Adding that the
party "still has to be taught one nationally," he warned: "A lot of
2004 will be about what happened in New York in 2001. It's about
dignity." In 2001, Sharpton engaged in a behind-the-scenes dialogue
with campaign aides to Republican Mike Bloomberg while publicly
disparaging Green.
Sharpton recently rebuffed an appeal by DNC chair Terry McAuliffe to
join a post-primary March 25 event to support the nominee, sending a
letter saying he would attend but would also "continue to campaign
vigorously until the last day of the convention." He has also
repeatedly vowed that he would speak on prime-time TV during the
July convention, saying party leaders would decide "whether that's
inside the hall or out in the parking lot," threatening
demonstrations unless granted exposure guaranteed to turn off many
voters. Stone terminated a 45-minute Voice interview shortly after
he was asked about any involvement he might have had with the letter
to McAuliffe, saying he was "not characterizing my conversations
with Sharpton," though he freely did in a recent Times interview.
While Bush forces like the Club for Growth were buying ads in Iowa
assailing then front-runner Howard Dean, Sharpton took center stage
at a debate confronting Dean about the absence of blacks in his
Vermont cabinet. Stone told the Times that he "helped set the tone
and direction" of the Dean attacks, while Charles Halloran, the
Sharpton campaign manager installed by Stone, supplied the research.
While other Democratic opponents were also attacking Dean, none did
it on the advice of a consultant who's worked in every GOP
presidential campaign since his involvement in the Watergate
scandals of 1972, including all of the Bush family campaigns. Asked
if he'd ever been involved in a Democratic campaign before, Stone
cited his 1981 support of Ed Koch, though he was quoted at the time
as saying he only did it because Koch was also given the Republican
ballot line.
Just as Stone has a history of political skulduggery, Sharpton has a
little-noticed history of Republican machinations inconsistent with
his fiery rhetoric. He endorsed Al D'Amato in 1986, appeared with
George Pataki two days before his 1994 race against Mario Cuomo,
invited Ralph Nader to his headquarters on the eve of the 2000 vote,
befriended Bill Powers when he was the state GOP chair, and debuted
as a preacher in the church of a black minister who was also a
Brooklyn Republican district leader. The current co-chair of his
presidential campaign gave as much to Bush-Cheney as he did to
Sharpton, and many of the black businessmen supporting this campaign
or NAN have strong GOP ties. His conduit in the Bloomberg campaign,
Harold Doley III, was the son of the first black with a seat on Wall
Street. A major NAN backer over the years, Doley Jr. was appointed
to positions in five Republican administrations, including Bush's.
Stone, whose Miami mob even jostled a visiting Sharpton during the
recount, said recently in The American Spectator that if Sharpton
were to run "as an independent" in the 2006 Hillary Clinton race,
she would be "sunk," implicitly suggesting that this operation may
be a precursor to another Stone-Sharpton mission. In his book Too
Close to Call, New Yorker columnist Jeffrey Toobin exposed Baker's
tapping of Stone, as well as Stone and his Cuban wife Nydia's role
in firing up Cuban protesters, with Stone calling the shots the day
of the shutdown over a walkie-talkie in a building across the street
from the canvassing board headquarters. The Stone mob was chanting
Sharpton's slogan "No Justice, No Peace" when the board stopped the
count, which was universally seen as the turning point in the battle
that made Bush president.
The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush campaign was
planning a special advertising campaign targeting black voters,
seeking as much as a quarter of the vote, and any Sharpton-connected
outrage against the party could either lower black turnout in
several key close states, or move votes to Bush. Both were widely
reported as the consequences of Sharpton's anti-Green rhetoric in
2001, a result Sharpton celebrated both in his book and at a Bronx
victory party on election night.
A Mysterious Marriage
The Stone involvement in the Sharpton campaign began in early March
at a lunch at Gallagher's, a midtown steak house that Stone
frequents. Stone and Sharpton do not disagree that two mutual
friends, Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf and anti-Rockefeller-
drug-law activist Randy Credico, helped to arrange it. Sheinkopf and
Credico say Stone asked them to arrange the meeting, and Credico
recalls "repeated pressure" from Stone to put it together. Stone
says both are "mistaken" and that Sheinkopf suggested it to Sharpton
and that Sharpton sought the meeting. Sharpton was scheduled at one
point to fly to Miami for the get-together, says Credico, but
canceled. Sheinkopf says it was "certainly Stone who initiated it,"
though he agreed that "Sharpton needed to talk to people who know
how to do presidential campaigns."
Sharpton, who brought lawyer Sanford Rubinstein and NAN director
Marjorie Harris Smikle to the lunch, said everyone present-including
Sheinkopf and Stone-believed he needed to hire experienced staff.
Stone discussed the daunting requirement of raising at least $5,000
in 20 states to obtain federal matching funds and outlined some of
"the things he had to do," according to Sheinkopf, to achieve it.
Credico recalls that Stone "mentioned Halloran's name," dumping on
the inexperienced consultant, Roberto Ramirez, who Sharpton was then
using. "They had a natural affinity," Sheinkopf said, "and agreed to
continue talking."
Credico said Stone explained his interest in working with Sharpton
by saying that they had "a mutual obsession: We both hate the
Democratic Party." Stone told Credico that he "would have some fun
with Sharpton's campaign" and "bring Terry McAuliffe to his knees."
Stone, Credico, and Sheinkopf walked to Stone's apartment after the
lunch, and Stone was elated with the tenor of the meeting.
Sharpton was already negotiating a deal with Frank Watkins, who ran
both of Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns, so he took no
immediate action on Stone's suggestions. Halloran was busy anyway
with another Stone- arranged assignment-running the parliamentary
campaign for the United Bermuda Party, ironically the white-led
party seeking to unseat the island's first black government.
Halloran had also managed a Stone-run campaign in New York in 2002,
spending nearly $65 million of billionaire Tom Golisano's money and
getting the Independence Party candidate a mere 14 percent of the
vote in the gubernatorial race. Stone, whose firm represented the
prior Bermuda government, did initial work in the 2003 race there
and left, recommending Halloran. Sharpton says that when the Bermuda
job was over in September, he hired Halloran to work under Watkins,
but that when he discovered that Jackson and Watkins were
"sabotaging my campaign" and were really with Howard Dean, he
replaced Watkins with Halloran.
Halloran is a capable operative who claims he did advance work in
the first Clinton campaign, and that he worked as a consultant in a
statewide Democratic race in Georgia and as a volunteer for Al Gore
during the recount battle. He has become so close to Stone over the
last two years, however, that he stays at Stone's 40 Central Park
South apartment when he's in New York working for Sharpton. Halloran
and his wife celebrated Stone's 50th birthday with him and his wife
last year, and the two operatives talk virtually every day. By his
own account, Halloran made so much money in the Golisano and Bermuda
campaigns, he has so far worked for Sharpton since September 4
without receiving a single cent in pay.
Sharpton's latest FEC filing lists Stone as collecting nearly $5,000
in expense reimbursement. The campaign also owes him $50,000 in pay
through December 31. It's the only time he can recall running a
campaign on trust. Since Sharpton 2004 now owes ($348,450) almost as
much as it's raised ($382,766), and since the Rev has left a
notorious trail of other liens in his wake, it's a peculiar level of
trust.
Angels for Al
The same paucity of payments is true for a collection of other
Stone-Halloran associates working in the campaign. Ernest Baynard,
another Golisano campaign veteran who helped set up the Sharpton-at-
the-beach e-mail address and does press and research for the
campaign, hasn't been paid a cent and is listed as a $20,000 debtor.
Ironically, while working for Sharpton, Baynard's Meridian Hill
Strategies has been simultaneously retained by another campaign
Stone helped launch, arch-conservative Larry Klayman's run for the
U.S. Senate in Florida. Two other ex-Golisano consultants, Joe
Ruffin and Andre Johnson, ran Sharpton's campaign in the Washington,
D.C., primary last month, and unlike Halloran and Baynard, were
actually paid for it, a total of $12,900. (Johnson is owed an
additional $3,500.)
The Archer Group, a San Francisco- based consulting company that
reeled in $246,000 from Golisano, dispatched its two top executives,
Michael Pitts and Ron Coleman, to New York back in September. In all
this time, the company has only been paid $5,000 by the campaign for
"logistics." The campaign filing lists the company as owed only
another $5,000 for "rent"-on an office/ apartment at 50 West 34th
Street, where the company used to run its Sharpton operations.
Pitts, whom Stone gratuitously described as "a 300-pound black
Democratic operative," says they were recruited by Halloran "to do a
national field operation plan." Admitting that it makes him "uneasy"
that Stone is so involved in the Sharpton campaign, Pitts says he
nonetheless participated in at least five strategy sessions with
Stone to plan field operations, labeling him a "Mr. Know-It-All Kind
of Guy." Calling Stone's involvement "sinister," Pitts
simultaneously dismissed it, saying Stone "just wants to be
disruptive" and "likes to be in the shit."
All the other payments to Archer were made not by the campaign, but
by NAN, which Stone has reportedly been quietly subsidizing. Pitts
acknowledged that they signed a $20,000-a-month contract with
Sharpton, but says the price was subsequently reduced. He says they
were paid entirely by NAN until December, ostensibly to run a voter
registration operation. But Pitts concedes that all they did was a
registration plan, never any registration, and that they began "to
focus more on scheduling" for the Rev, saying that many of the
events they scheduled across the country were "shared events," part
campaign and part NAN.
"We knew some of these things were commingled," he said. "We heard
from Charles that it had been ruled that our arrangements had gotten
a bit too hazy." Was there, he asked, "a hazy thing" about being
paid by NAN to do scheduling for the campaign? "Yeah, you get caught
up in the middle of it."
In early December, Pitts says they went on the campaign payroll. But
by the end of December, the 34th Street office was vacated and
Coleman was back in California. Pitts stayed with it, spending most
of the last few weeks in South Carolina, and moving on this week to
Michigan, where Sharpton plans a major effort. Elizebeth Burke,
another Golisano aide, worked with Coleman and Pitts, first at
Sharpton's campaign office at the hospital workers union, and then
at the Archer apartment. She says the $5,000 payment to Archer is
"laughable" compared to the amount of campaign work the company did.
Burke was paid $1,000 a week, half by NAN and half by the campaign,
and says she did "all the logistics" for him across the country,
"working with debate organizers and creating campaign events."
Burke says Pitts and Coleman told her that Stone made "at least two
loans in six figures to NAN, totaling well over $200,000"-and that
they were all "stunned to hear about it" because Stone, she said,
"has to know that he'll never get it back." She also recounted how
in December, Sharpton personally wrote a $10,000 check for Archer's
services that bounced. "We found out the account didn't exist; it
was a closed account." The campaign and NAN, which she calls "a
shell," were in such disarray that "the only way we were staying
afloat was through other sources that might not be legal, Republican
sources."
Credico, who's remained in close touch with Stone throughout the
Sharpton adventure and who heard the Maddox story from him, says
Stone told him he took a $270,000 promissory note from Sharpton.
Stone also told Credico that Sharpton ran up $18,000 on his credit
card last year, covering some of the costs of a California trip,
including a fundraising dinner thrown by NAN. "I can't believe
Roger's still involved with Sharpton," Credico said. "All he does is
complain to me about Sharpton owing him all this money. Last time we
had dinner, I told him, Why don't you just get out of it?" Credico
has his own complaints about the campaign's finances, saying that
Stone and Halloran promised to send him to Iowa but never did,
setting him back the price of an airplane ticket from California
when he rushed back to New York.
Asked about the $270,000 and the $18,000 by the Voice, Stone
replied: "Go badger somebody else." Sharpton said the Voice should
get NAN's IRS filings for the payments, knowing that they do not
detail revenue sources and don't have to be filed for months. "That
was our annual event in California," he said, insisting only that
any possible credit card purchases by Stone were NAN-related
exclusively. "I asked a lot of people to help." He said the same
thing about the loans: "I asked him in terms of the network." The
NAN loans are a potential illegal end-run around FEC limits, as are
his donated services, which are an in-kind contribution to the
campaign from a professional consultant.
The combination of the unpaid or underpaid services of Stone,
Halloran, Baynard, Archer, et al., together with the NAN subsidies,
paint a picture of a Sharpton operation that is utterly dependent on
his new ally Stone, whose own sponsors are as unclear as ever. Stone
is friendly with a number of Bush sidekicks, from Baker to
powerhouse GOP Washington lobbyists like Wayne Berman and Scott
Reed. Berman represents the Carlyle Group, the D.C.-based equity
engine that includes Baker and former president Bush. Halloran's
wife, Chris Trampf, works at Carlyle, though Halloran insists she is
merely a back-office staffer.
Blackface Bucks
Stone acknowledged that he "helped Sharpton" in the campaign's
desperate attempt in November and December to reach the $5,000
matching-fund threshold in 20 states. "I collected checks," he said.
"That's how matching funds is done. I like Al Sharpton. I was
helping a friend." Sharpton was the last candidate to meet the
December 31 deadline and is immediately seeking more than $150,000
in federal funding. If the FEC, which has been reviewing his
application for a month, determines that he meets the threshold,
Sharpton will be eligible for more.
But he only submitted 21 states, and at least one, Illinois, is
unlikely to be certified, since it came in at $5,100 and contains
two $250 contributions from the same individual. Only single
contributions of up to $250 can count toward the threshold. That
means Sharpton's funding-against which he has already taken a
$150,000 bank loan-is the lifeblood of the campaign. Stone and
Halloran allies, including staffers Johnson and Ruffin, kicked in
the last four $250 contributions in D.C., all on December 30 and 31,
that gave Sharpton a perilous $5,332 total.
In Florida, Stone's wife, Nydia; son Scott; daughter-in-law Laurie;
mother-in-law Olga Bertran; executive assistant Dianne Thorne; Tim
Suereth, who lives with Thorne; and Halloran's mother, Jane Stone
(unrelated to Roger, he says), pushed Sharpton comfortably over the
threshold, donating $250 apiece in December. Jeanmarie Ferrara, who
works at a Miami public relations firm that joined Stone in the '90s
fight on behalf of the sugar industry against a tax to resuscitate
the Everglades, also gave $250, as did the wife of the firm's name
partner, Ray Casas. Another lobbyist, Eli Feinberg, a Republican
giver appointed to a top position by the Republican state insurance
commissioner, did $250.
Clive and Lenore Baldwin, entertainers known for their
impersonations of Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker, came in at the
matchable maximum as well. Stone adopted their act years ago,
producing a Clive Baldwin recording, and putting him onstage at the
1996 Republican National Convention. In a Times tale of a recent
Baldwin appearance in Long Island, he wound up being "shown the
door" after a "confrontation" with angry black caterers. (Apparently
Stone could not locate Amos & Andy for a contribution.)
Two vendors for a current campaign assisted by Stone-the senate
campaign of Larry Klayman-also donated in Florida, with public
relations consultant Michael Caputo and Tasmania Productions owner
Teddi Segal donating $250 (she says she doesn't know Stone). Caputo,
ironically, was Stone's spokesman in 1996, when Stone was embroiled
in the most embarrassing scandal of his career-the much ballyhooed
revelation that he and his wife had advertised, with photos, for
swinging partners in magazines and on the Internet. Caputo has,
until recently, been handling press inquiries for Klayman, an
evangelical who led the sex assault in Washington on Bill Clinton
and is running a moral-majority, retake-Cuba campaign for senate.
Stone volunteered behind the scenes for Klayman too, and several
Stone-tied vendors, like Baynard and pollster Fabrizio, McLaughlin &
Associates, have been retained.
In fact, the treasurer of the Klayman campaign, Paul Jensen, a top
Bush administration transportation official, joined his wife,
Pamela, in making $250 donations on December 30 to Sharpton, helping
get him over the threshold in a third state. Jensen contributed to
Sharpton, who favors a federal law certifying civil unions for
homosexuals, even though the lawyer has filed suits in 16 states
seeking to defrock Presbyterian ministers who've "violated their
vows" by ordaining gays. Stone has been in frequent touch with
Jensen and Klayman in recent months and said that he might have
"told Halloran to call him for a check" or asked himself, as he
indicated he might have with many others on this list of anomalies.
Though Sharpton conceded that he asked Stone to "help raise the
matching funds," he said "everybody helped me qualify," adding that
"it's ridiculous" to suggest that Stone's role, though he concedes
it made a difference in some states, was of any overall
significance. He insisted, accurately, that the bulk of his
contributions were from black supporters across the country,
attracted to his candidacy. But that does not make any less
indispensable the critical, targeted fundraising Stone engineered.
Halloran traveled through Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama in a
last-ditch December effort to nail down enough to meet the
threshold.
Sharpton and Stone are, in a sense, brothers under the skin,
outlandish personalities too large to be bound by the constraints
that govern the rest of us. Stone was the registered agent in
America for Argentina's intelligence agency, sucking up spy novels;
Sharpton was a confidential informant for the FBI, wiring up on
black leaders for the feds. Stone is a fashion impersonator,
dressing like a hip-hop dandy; Sharpton, having shed his gold
medallion and jogger suits, now looks like a smooth banker. Stone
was involved in Watergate at the age of 19; Sharpton was a boy- wonder
preacher. Stone's mentor from the days of his youth was Roy
Cohn; Sharpton's was James Brown. Sharpton is a minister without a
church; Stone is almost as rootless, having left the powerhouse
Washington firm he helped form years ago. Each reinvents himself
daily, if not hourly, as if nothing in their past matters.
For all his brilliance and personal charm, Sharpton's political
bombast has always been more spectacle than belief. He is so
determined to reach Jesse's heights he's sunk lower than ever,
mining black America for Bush's secret agent. He recently ate dinner
in a Manhattan restaurant with Stone and found himself sitting
opposite former FBI agent Joe Spinelli, who flipped him after
picking him up in a mob video sting. All the ironies of his life are
coming home to roost, just as he stands in a brighter limelight than
he's ever enjoyed. The Rev needs to get some religion.
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Additional research: Andrew Burtless, Cristi Hegranes, Brian
O'Connor, Abigail Roberts, Catherine Shu, and Jennifer Suh
rodneyc..
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