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 him 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 has received a seven-figure finder's fee from Carlyle, the D.C.-based
equity engine that includes Baker. Former president Bush worked for the
Carlyle Group until late last year. 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.
