Election Follies Continue in Florida

[GreatAuntK]

Palm Beach County Commissioner faces $450,000 fine. She collected funds to send out a flyer to try to get people to vote 3 state judges out of office (unsuccessfully). Source of $150k uncertain. Right after the fall 2000 election, she was recruited by a ne'er do well* to sign her name to some flyers bashing Justices Harry Lee Anstead, and others for defeat, based on their opinions in the re-count case.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-fmccarty25jul25,0,507373.story?coll=sfla-news-florida

Seems odd to me that the fellow who helped pull the project together isn't even mentioned in the above 7/25/03 article updating the situation. It's a pretty interesting story - the Daily Business Review link isn't active any more. I hope it's ok to post a few paragraphs from it... but first, a few words about Roger Stone...

"Remember the Republican 'riot' in Palm Beach County during the Florida recount? (A handful of GOP operatives and Hill staffers banged on a door in front of TV cameras.) Stone directed the event from a Winnebago down the street. He told me about it one afternoon at lunch, laughing as he did.

Stone is smart and charming in a mob-related sort of way -- think of a right-wing Terry McAuliffe. He's experienced. He can be ruthless. If I were running for office, I'd hire him. The Republicans could use a lot more Roger Stones. Far more than they can use another George Pataki."
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/politics/columns/nationalinterest/5066/

Link no longer active: www.dailybusinessreview.com/news.html?news_id=27057
July 09, 2003 By: Dan Christensen: "In a case with national political implications, the Florida Elections Commission has ruled that Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty violated state campaign finance rules in working to oust three Florida Supreme Court justices..."

...That campaign, per Judge Hooper, was orchestrated by Roger J. Stone Jr., a Republican lobbyist and political operative who reportedly worked for President Richard Nixon’s Watergate-era re-election committee and served as a campaign strategist for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. "Stone, who owns a $2.2 million bayfront mansion in Surfside, received $1.8 million from the Miami-Dade County Commission last year for political work he did for the county."

"...the FEC’s lawyer argued that Stone and McCarty established the Committee to Take Back Our Judiciary to pressure the state Supreme Court to rule in favor of then Texas Gov. George W. Bush in his ballot recount battle with Al Gore. McCarty testified that the committee began to take shape six to nine days after the Nov. 7 election. The Florida Supreme Court was first asked by Gore to order hand recounts in the decisive Florida race on Nov. 15."

“'This was an attempt to let the justices know, who were going to eventually decide the presidential election, that they were going to be watched,' commission assistant counsel Eric M. Lipman said in his opening arguments. 'And it was an attempt to influence what they were going to do.'"

"According to Judge Hooper’s 36-page order, Stone, through his Washington, D.C.-based firm Ikon Public Affairs, was the real agent behind the campaign in late 2000 and 2001 to defeat the Florida justices in the 2002 merit retention election. But who, if anyone, was paying Stone and giving him orders remains unclear."

"A complaint was not filed against Stone and no charges were filed against him. He never was questioned or offered testimony because neither the FEC nor McCarty was able to locate him to serve him with a subpoena. State investigators also did not pursue a number of leads that might have shed light on Stone’s role. Craig Snyder, Stone’s partner in Ikon Public Affairs, was never questioned either."

"Thus, many mysteries remain about the short, strident, and secret life of the Committee to Take Back Our Judiciary. In particular, the state hasn’t determined the source of the $150,000 that paid for the direct mail fund-raising campaign targeting the justices, or the additional $50,000 that was paid by the committee for unexplained reasons."

At the hearing, McCarty (in her 4th term as Palm Beach County Commissioner) testified that she was “played by Stone.” She admitted “stupid mistakes” and called herself a “victim.” In an earlier deposition, she called the Committee to Take Back Our Judiciary “a scam,” according to a transcript.

<clip>

The PAC began operating in late Nov. 2000 but wasn’t legally established until Jan. 2001, targeted Justices Harry Lee Anstead, Charles T. Wells, and Justice Leander J. Shaw for defeat in the 2002 merit retention elections. McCarty’s “mad as hell” letter, was mailed to some 350,000 conservatives in Dec. 2000.

The solicitation letter raised about $220,000, including $150,000 of undisclosed origin. (The contribution limit to state election PACs in Florida is $500.)

"McCarty testified that between Nov. 13 and Nov. 16, Stone called her at her home. 'He explained to me that people were very, very upset with the way the Florida Supreme Court was conducting itself, and that in Florida we have a merit retention system.'"

On Dec. 8, the Florida Supreme Court, "in a 4-3 ruling, ordered the then-stalled recount to resume and be extended statewide. Four days after that, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote in Bush v. Gore, effectively shut down the recount, prompting Gore to concede the election to Bush."

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"On Thanksgiving Day 2000, according to McCarty’s testimony, Stone faxed her the text of a fund-raising letter to which she’d agreed to lend her name. Later, McCarty said, Stone and his associates arranged to file all the necessary paperwork to create the Committee to Take Back Our Judiciary. The FEC investigators found that the papers sent to the Florida Department of Elections to establish the committee were sent from the Washington office of Ikon Public Affairs, according to documents in the FEC’s case file."

Stone worked as a Republican Party operative for Richard Nixon's CREEP, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (Watergate break-in time) but Stone was not implicated. Other issues he has worked on in Florida could be googled, e.g., Florida Sugar Growers.

Historical background:

http://www.evote.com/index.asp?Page=/news_section/2000-12/12202000Liberal.asp

http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/09/recount.fla.court/

:silly: