[Mb-civic] Republican Dirty Tricks

Mon Oct 18 11:53:53 PDT 2004

Republican Dirty Tricks

By Max Blumenthal, AlterNet
 Posted on October 15, 2004, Printed on October 18, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/20194/

Just how close is dirty trickster Nathan Sproul to the Bush/Cheney
re-election campaign?

AlterNet has learned that Sproul, the former Arizona Republican Party and
Christian Coalition director, has cozy ties to a group of consultants
working on the Bush/Cheney campaign. According to a Democratic source
well-placed in Arizona political circles, Sproul's firm, Sproul and
Associates, operates next door to the office of Gordon C. James Public
Relations (GCJPR) in Phoenix, a Republican PR company which is coordinating
various Bush/Cheney campaign events nationwide and has provided PR services
for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Last spring, one of GCJPR's
executives, who is an advisory board member of Bush's re-election campaign,
served as the chair of a ballot campaign Sproul was quarterbacking, while,
according to the source, Sproul collaborated with a GCJPR employee who is a
White House consultant on a scheme to get independent candidate Ralph Nader
on the Arizona ballot. In both instances, Sproul's company, Voter Outreach
of America, was involved in gathering signatures.

In Nevada, Voter Outreach of America is accused by former employees of
shredding the registration forms of thousands of Democrats; in West
Virginia, Voter Outreach of America employees say they were instructed to
mislead voters into registering Republican and voting for Bush; in Oregon,
yet another swing state, the state attorney general has opened a criminal
investigation into allegations that Sproul's firm, which is Voter Outreach
of America's parent company, was involved in intentionally destroying or
discarding voter registration forms signed by Democrats. According to
OpenSecrets.org, Sproul's firm received $125,000 this year from the
Republican National Committee for voter registration and another $500,000
for "political consulting."

 The cozy ties between Sproul and Bush operatives should raise a serious
question: Is Sproul simply an overzealous lone wolf, or are his activities
part of a concerted effort by the Bush/Cheney campaign to subvert the
democratic process?

Gordon C. James, the founder and director of GCJPR, is a longtime Bush
apparatchik. According to his bio on GCJPR's website, James helped handle
media relations for President George H.W. Bush as the White House "lead
advance representative." During George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign,
James' firm handled PR and event management for Bush's Iowa Caucus campaign,
all three debates against Al Gore, two campaign train trips and his election
night festivities in Austin, Texas. Recently, GCJPR organized a Bush
mega-rally in Phoenix and an appearance by Laura Bush at another campaign
rally in Minneapolis. James also worked for five months as L. Paul Bremer's
spinmeister in Baghdad.

James said all of his firm's activities on behalf of the Bush/Cheney
campaign were performed "on a volunteer basis," though GCJPR has received
funding this year from the Republican National Committee. And James
maintained that though he knows Sproul, they don't work together. "Nathan
works more on the political side," James stated. "We're a PR firm."

Sproul did not respond to requests for an interview.

James did not mention that one of GCJPR's executives, George W. Bush for
President advisory board member Lisa James, served as chairwoman of an
Arizona ballot initiative that Sproul spearheaded last spring called "No
Taxpayer Money For Politicians." The ballot measure, which was soundly
defeated, was a right-wing, corporate-funded effort to ban candidates for
state office from receiving public money for their campaigns. Sproul's Voter
Outreach of America spearheaded the measure's petition drive. In her
capacity as chairwoman, Lisa James operated directly out of Sproul's office.

What's more, according to a well-placed source who spoke on condition of
anonymity, a GCJPR employee, Meghan Rose, worked with Sproul on a
clandestine campaign to get Nader on the Arizona ballot last spring. Last
June, Derek Lee of Lee Petitions told me that while his company was handling
various signature drives in Arizona, Sproul's Voter Outreach of America was
paying petitioners to collect as many signatures as they could for Nader's
ballot qualification campaign. Once rumors began emerging about covert
Republican assistance to Nader, Sproul "put the hush-hush on it real quick,"
Lee said.

In order to cover his tracks, Sproul devised a clever scheme. According to
the source, Sproul tasked GCJPR's Rose to drive the Nader petitions to a
"low-end" motel in Scottsdale where Jenny Breslyn, the person officially
contracted by the Nader campaign to oversee its signature drive, was
staying. There, Breslyn and her employees mixed the petitions in with their
own, in effect, brushing them clean of Sproul's fingerprints.

Rose has worked as a consultant for the Bush White House Easter Egg Roll,
the State Department and the Republican National Committee. She is currently
working out of James' RNC-funded shop and as a volunteer on Bush's
re-election campaign. Confronted with the accusation that she served as the
baglady for Sproul's Nader ballot scheme, Rose would not issue an outright
denial.

"I do not work for Nathan Sproul," she stated repeatedly. "I don't even know
how you got my name."

Asked again to confirm or deny the accusation, Rose became testy. "I didn't
do anything. I've shaken Nathan Sproul's hand once," she said.

Reached by cellphone, Jenny Breslyn refused to speak directly to the
accusation that Rose delivered Sproul's Nader petitions to her, referring
the question to Sproul, who could not be reached. However, she did volunteer
that in her dealings with Sproul, "I do know a Meghan."

Sproul's dirty tricks may have finally caught up with him, though far from
his stomping grounds in Arizona. In Oregon, Sproul's firm is being
investigated by the state attorney general and could face a class-C felony,
punishable by five years in jail, for allegedly altering and destroying
voter registration forms. And in Nevada, state election officials have just
launched an investigation into whether Sproul's Voters Outreach of America
destroyed the registration forms of exclusively Democratic voters.

On Wednesday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe wrote a
letter to his Republican counterpart, Ed Gillespie, demanding that the
Republican National Committee detail its involvement with Sproul's alleged
voter fraud. "We are deeply concerned these reports of Republican National
Committee funded felonious activities in these states could serve to
discourage all voters from voting because of concerns of problems with their
ballot," McAuliffe wrote. "Regardless of party or candidate, it is the civic
and moral duty of both parties to encourage complete and full participation
in the democratic process."