Larisa Alexandrovna: "Permanent Repub Majority PT. IV" How GOP Interests Sought To Topple Dems In MS

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Tue Apr-01-08 10:38 AM
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Larisa Alexandrovna: "Permanent Repub Majority PT. IV" How GOP Interests Sought To Topple Dems In MS

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/How_Bush_US_attorney_riddled_with_0401.html

The US Attorney who wasn't fired: How Bush pick helped prosecute top Democrat-backed judge

Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday April 1, 2008

The Permanent Republican Majority, Part IV: How corporate-GOP interests sought to topple Democrats in Mississippi

Since the deregulations of the Reagan era, the electoral strategy of the Republican Party and the interests of the corporate lobby have become intimately entwined.

Karl Rove � President George W. Bush�s former Deputy Chief of Staff and campaign maestro � capitalized on this alliance in Texas in the early 1990's, when he made campaigning against "activist judges" a cornerstone of Republican victories. He then applied the same technique in Alabama, where he and Republican consultant William Canary began systematically working in 1994 to elect pro-business judges.

As reported in Raw Story�s The Permanent Republican Majority - Part One, Canary reemerged in 2002 as the advisor to Alabama Republican gubernatorial candidate and now governor, Bob Riley. Canary�s wife, Leura, meanwhile, used her position as the US Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama to investigate Riley�s Democratic opponent, incumbent governor Don Siegelman, helping ensure his defeat and leading to his prosecution on bribery charges, conviction, and imprisonment in 2007.

During the mid-90s, a serious of state lawsuits against the tobacco industry delivered a heavy blow to American business interests in the South.

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The conflict was a major factor in then-Democratic Lieut. Gov. Don Siegelman�s election as governor in 1998. Almost as soon as Siegelman took office, however, Pryor initiated a series of corruption investigations against him. After the Bush administration took office in 2001, these state probes were elevated to the federal level at the hands of US Attorney Leura Canary. As reported in The Permanent Republican Majority � Part Three, Rove and Canary also helped promote the Siegelman investigations.

In neighboring Mississippi, meanwhile, the tobacco suit had produced several extremely wealthy trial lawyers, who became major funders of the local Democratic Party.

In 2003, a Bush-appointed US Attorney, Dunnica Lampton (above right), brought federal charges against one of those lawyers, plaintiff�s attorney Paul Minor, alleging that he had bribed a Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, Judge Oliver E. Diaz, Jr.

Just as in the case of Governor Don Siegelman in Alabama, when the first trial of Diaz failed to produce the desired result of removing him from his elected seat in 2005, fresh charges were brought almost immediately.

Diaz and Siegelman also shared the ire of tribal casinos. Siegelman�s attempt to introduce an Alabama state lottery to support education initiatives had ruffled the feathers of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, who saw it as a threat to their interests, while Diaz stood against the Choctaws by ruling in favor of more regulation of tribal casinos.

Diaz himself had previously been the target of GOP-allied business interests during his 2000 election campaign, when the United States Chamber of Commerce ran issues advertising supporting his opponent.

The United States Chamber of Commerce
Despite its seemingly bipartisan name, the Chamber of Commerce has operated as a pro-Republican powerhouse since the fervently anti-regulation Thomas J. Donahue became president in 1997.

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William Canary, the Alabama political consultant who was central to the defeat and prosecution of Governor Don Siegelman, is closely tied to Donohue and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. When Donohue was president of the American Trucking Association in the 1990�s, Canary served under him as a counselor, political advisor, and eventually Senior Vice President for State, Federation and Intergovernmental Affairs.

Canary and Donohue were also friends. According to two Alabama Republican lawyers recently interviewed by RAW STORY, it was Donohue who recommended that Canary be named president of the Business Council of Alabama, a position he assumed in March 2003. The Business Council is currently the Alabama affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and it has played an active role in Alabama politics since at least 1994, when it invited Karl Rove to the state to work with Canary.

�You know it was Donohue who helped place Billy Canary at the (Council), don�t you?� said one of the Alabama lawyers several weeks ago, during our second trip to Alabama. The attorney asked to remain anonymous for fear of backlash. A second attorney interviewed in Alabama familiar with the events also said Donohue had a hand in getting Canary the job at the Council.

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