Home > Strange Bedfellows Dept.: Al Sharpton and the GOP
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
Village Voice
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 Franciscoâ€" 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.
Additional research: Andrew Burtless, Cristi Hegranes,
Brian O’Connor, Abigail Roberts, Catherine Shu, and
Jennifer Suh