quote:All of John Kerry's one-time rivals in the Democratic presidential primary eventually lined up to support him as the nominee, but only Al Sharpton got paid for it.
The Democratic National Committee paid Sharpton $86,000 in travel and consulting fees to compensate for his campaigning for Kerry and other Democratic candidates, according to reports to the Federal Election Commission.
...
But records show that while most of the money was to reimburse travel expenses, Sharpton was paid $35,000 as a "political consulting fee" 15 days after the election. The consulting fee was first reported in this week's edition of the Village Voice.
Democratic National Committee spokesman Jano Cabrera said the party paid Sharpton at the request of the Kerry campaign. She would not say when the party agreed to pay Sharpton or whether he requested the consulting fees.
Kerry's eight other former rivals from the Democratic primary also worked to varying degrees to get Kerry elected. In particular, Wesley Clark, Bob Graham, Dick Gephardt and Dennis Kucinich often campaigned with Kerry, although the latter three mostly appeared in their home states. But none of the other eight Democrats were paid travel reimbursements or consulting fees.
There's a certain type of news story that always confuses me. This is one of them. Why does anyone care? There's no hint that this is illegal. I'm sure other people got paid by the Kerry campaign. I'm sure many other people campaigning for Kerry didn't pay their own airfare.
Why did someone take the time to write this up and post it (or publish it in the Village Voice)?
posted
I'd hazard a guess that the reason this is news is that it's about Sharpton, not Kerry. During the primary races, I saw national commentators refer to him in ways that reflected amusement and derision.
As an example, Tim Russert referred to Sharpton often as someone who "lives off the land" and "lives WELL off the land."
The derision comes stems from his involvement in the Tawana Brawley matter.
quote:Sharpton made national headlines in 1987 after he became an advocate for Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old, black New Yorker who claimed six white police officers abducted and raped her.
A grand jury declared the story a hoax. Later, Sharpton had to pay $65,000 for defaming an assistant district attorney he accused of being involved in the alleged attack.
Chris Matthews was one of the commentators who talked about him with derision, specifically over this. Personally, I didn't track the case and don't know what to make of it myself.
But it's probably a poorly written attempt to portray - fairly or not - Sharpton as someone who doesn't give of himself, but is up for rent.
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posted
*snort* My opinions on Al Sharpton start low and only sink lower.
Is this news? Not really.
But this isn't really the first time a media source has been employed for airing social or political outrage and indignation - this time, I can't say that I object all that much.
posted
I guess. If someone wanted to do a piece on Sharpton as an opportunistic politico, this would be worth a sentence or two. But as a story on its own, it just kind of sits there on the page crying "Slow news day! Slow news day!"
posted
Hey, there's a season one Law and Order episode that's ripped from that headline. Neato. I love that show so much.
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quote: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.
The alleged motive:
quote: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.
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