Ethics Complaint Could Topple Struggling Sharpton Campaign
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
A nonprofit Washington-area group has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, seeking to block the Rev. Al Sharpton's presidential campaign from receiving tax dollars. It is a potentially crippling blow to a candidacy already deep in debt and facing increasing criticism over its relationship with the Republican operative Roger Stone.
The group, the National Legal and Policy Center, which says it promotes ethics in government, filed its complaint on Thursday, charging that Mr. Sharpton's campaign expenses have been improperly subsidized by his not-for-profit civil rights group, the National Action Network, and by Mr. Stone, who has a reputation for questionable political tactics.
"The F.E.C. has an obligation to safeguard the integrity of the matching-funds process," said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center. "If there is an effort to defraud the taxpayer, we seek to stop it."
The complaint comes at a difficult time for Mr. Sharpton, whose success at the Democratic presidential debates has not been followed by success at the polls. He has so far failed to pick up more than one delegate in the states that have held primaries, his campaign is about half a million dollars in debt and his relationship with Mr. Stone has even supporters questioning his credibility.
Mr. Sharpton's campaign manager, Charles Halloran, said yesterday that the complaint was without merit and amounted to "harassment by a right-wing demagogue group."
Mr. Sharpton submitted paperwork to the Federal Election Commission in January stating that he qualified for federal matching funds because he had met the fund-raising threshold of $5,000 in donations of $250 or less in 20 states. If those papers are certified, Mr. Sharpton will receive $150,000. The commission said yesterday that certification was not "imminent."
Not only does Mr. Sharpton need to be certified to have any hope of keeping his campaign afloat, but he has also already borrowed against the $150,000 from Amalgamated Bank in New York, according to his filing with the commission. The loan is due March 15, according to the commission's papers, and if the matching funds are not available, Mr. Sharpton's campaign could be in default.
The election commission said it was unusual for a candidate to use an application for matching funds as collateral for a loan before the application had been certified. Mr. Sharpton's case is unusual in another way, said Robert Biersack, a spokesman for the commission. Candidates who have received matching funds may later be disqualified from additional payments if they do not get 10 percent of the vote in two consecutive primary rounds. Mr. Sharpton has not yet been certified as eligible for the funds, and has not yet reached the 10 percent threshold.
The National Legal and Policy Center, in its complaint to the federal agency, also criticizes Mr. Stone's role in financing and staffing Mr. Sharpton's campaign and loaning money to the National Action Network. Some of the financial details were reported in The Village Voice this week. The complaint also suggested that the National Action Network was improperly covering the cost of Mr. Sharpton's campaign travel, as well as his use of consultants and contractors.
Mr. Sharpton dismisses the allegations.
Posted by P6 at February 8, 2004 10:41 AM
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Comments
From my understanding, a candidate needs to get at least 20% of the vote in one primary or at least 10% in two primaries to continue receiving matching funds so both Al and Dennis are likely to become ineligible at some point anyway.
Who is this National Legal and Policy Center anyway?
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at February 8, 2004 03:03 PMIt's an outfit founded in 1991 which usually targets Democrats or progressive endeavors for abuse of power.
Here is their history. As one can see, they aren't eager to characterize themselves as partisan; and I'd like to keep as to whether or not they exposed genuine ethics violations. They proudly state, however, that they "sank" H. Clinton's health care reform proposal, not merely that they forced her to "open it up" to scrutiny. They helped expose corporate malfeasance at MCI and Boeing, which seemed like a rather curious departure for them, so I checked Open Secret's listing of contributions by firm (defense/aerospace and communications). This did not validate my initial hunch, which was that MCI and Boeing had contributed heavily to Democratic candidates. MCI was not listed at all and Boeing's contributions were in line with most defense industry contributions (about 35% to Dems, 65% to GOP). So I went to Issue Campaigns and looked up "MCI Communications." It's not much of a lead--there's no compelling evidence that the "baby bells" would have resolved then and there to get the NLPC to "take down" their business adversary because of an ad campaign directed against the access fees they charged MCI, Sprint and AT&T (GTE & the then-7 "baby bells" did conduct their own countervailing campaign, however, which spent twice as much money). Likewise, Boeing:
Another ad, which also ran in 2001 and was co-sponsored by Boeing and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers,iii stated “Together we support U.S. jobs. Vote for the Ex-Im Bank Bill.” The Export-Import Bank bill re-authorizes the operations of the Export-Import bank, which is a “government-operated bank [that] provides loans, loan guarantees and insurance to American companies to help finance their sales overseas and compete against often heavily subsidized foreign competitors.” The bill was signed into law in June 2002 and requires the bank “to focus more on small businesses and American industries facing unfair foreign competition” (AP, June 14, 2002).
"Issue Advertising, 107th Congress," PDF
So it would seem to be the case that the NLPC had minimal partisan provocation for investigating these two firms. However, their other targets are labor unions, the Clintons, and Democratic members of Congress (Rep. James Moran, D-VA, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA); an exception was made for Rep. Jon Cantwell, R-PA.
Posted by James R MacLean at February 8, 2004 04:26 PMThanks for doing the research on this, James. I probably would have done a little digging myself eventually but you saved me a lot of work. Usually groups that do things like this are partisan and it always helps to know who they're partisan for, in order to better judge what they're saying.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at February 8, 2004 07:38 PMI notice that they list themselves as a member of TownHall.com, a conservative website, and feature a testimonial from Rush Limbaugh in their about page. They promote their targeting of Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, and labor unions.
They were founded by Peter Flaherty, who was previously chairman of the Conservative Campaign Fund. He also founded Citizens for Reform. Here's plenty about Citizens for Reform's own FEC violations (PDF).
NLPC's Organized Labor Accountability Project is headed by David Kendrick, formerly legal information director for National Right to Work Legal Foundation, an anti-labor group.
The chairman of NLPC is Ken Boehm, whose bio mentions that he is "long active in both legal and conservative organizations". I didn't find anything really juicy on him yet.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at February 8, 2004 08:27 PM"They helped expose corporate malfeasance at MCI and Boeing, which seemed like a rather curious departure for them..."
A curious departure?? Care to explain your reasoning?
Posted by Brian at February 9, 2004 03:42 AMJames probably means that they seem otherwise quite friendly to corporations and more likely to focus on malfeasance by labor unions.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at February 9, 2004 06:00 AM