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Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008
Sproul also told the Arizona Republic that his firm has turned in more than 1,000 Democratic registration forms in Nevada, and many others elsewhere; he has no policy against registering Democrats, he said. This was confirmed for Salon by elections officials in the regions where Sproul has been known to work; many said that Sproul's workers did indeed turn in Democratic forms. But the Democratic forms were far outnumbered by the Republican forms, officials said, as you'd expect to occur with the kind of dishonest tactics Sproul was using.
Russell's attorney declined Salon's request to interview his client, citing the distress caused by the many attacks Russell has faced since he came forward. But the attorney, Michael Mushkin, says that his client has not been served with any lawsuit.
Russell has been interviewed by the FBI, according to media reports. But if his story proves true, action by law enforcement may not make much difference; the damage may have already been done, at least for the many Democrats who registered to vote with Sproul's workers who are unsure whether their forms were turned in. In Nevada, the Democratic Party asked a judge last week to open voter registration for one additional day to accommodate the disenfranchised. The request was denied on Friday afternoon.
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Democrats in Arizona who claim to see a connection between Nathan Sproul and the efforts of the state and national Republican Party point to this fact: Sproul's Phoenix office is located at 4715 N. 32nd St., Suite 107. The offices of Gordon C. James Public Relations, a Republican political firm run by a former member of the advance team for George H.W. Bush, and his wife Lisa, the head of the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign in Arizona, are located at 4715 N. 32nd St., Suite 104. At least geographically, then, Nathan Sproul is very close to a few of the most well-connected, powerful GOP politicos in the state.But do the connections go beyond the physical? Gordon James says no; he and his wife don't have a working relationship with Nathan Sproul, he said. "We don't do any business together," James said. "I've been with the Bush family for 26 years. I barely know Nathan. We both happen to be Republicans." Before she began working on the Bush-Cheney campaign, though, Lisa James did head a group called No Taxpayer Money for Politicians, formed in the spring by Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., to pass a ballot initiative that would have essentially repealed Arizona's Clean Elections campaign finance system. Sproul, a former head of the Arizona Republican Party, was hired by No Taxpayer Money for Politicians to conduct a signature drive to get the anti-Clean Elections bill on the ballot.
Sproul was phenomenally successful at his task. In Arizona, the Clean Elections system, which provides public campaign dollars to candidates who agree to forgo private funds, is broadly popular with voters, who approved the system in 1998. It's supported by some of the state's leading politicians, including Gov. Janet Napolitano and Sen. John McCain. But Sproul managed to get 280,000 signatures to repeal the bill. How did he do it?
Democrats in the state say his people weren't playing fair. Sarah Rosen, spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party, recalls talking to some of the anti-Clean Elections canvassers while they were out looking for signatures. "What they would do is come up to you and say, 'You know all those commercials on TV, those negative ads by politicians? All those are financed by your taxpayer dollars. Isn't that just awful? I want to get rid of that, you should too. Sign this petition, no taxpayer dollars for politicians.'"
The claim, Rosen notes, was false; the Clean Elections law doesn't provide enough money for many politicians to run TV ads, and anyway it prohibits a broad range of negative ads. But that didn't matter to Sproul's canvassers. Others in the state say that the petitioners would routinely just lie about the nature of the bill they were hawking. Even though their measure repealed Clean Elections, canvassers would say either that the measure didn't alter Clean Elections in any way, or that it actually helped Clean Elections. Bob Grossfeld, the Democratic political consultant, secretly videotaped one canvasser peddling this lie. In the video, Grossfeld, pretending to be an interested voter, repeatedly asks Sproul's canvasser how the bill in question would affect the Clean Elections bill.
"Would this help Clean Elections?" Grossfeld asks.
"Yeah."
"I like the Clean Elections concept -- would this be OK with that?"
"Yeah ... this is for Clean Elections."
"This is for Clean Elections?"
"Yes, it is."
Despite the signatures Sproul raised, the anti-Clean Elections bill was struck from the Arizona ballot this year by a court that concluded that the proposition's wording violated a state election law. But that wasn't Sproul's fault; his effort in the campaign, the signature drive, was a hit, and it's perhaps based on that record that the RNC decided to hire him for its voter registration efforts.
Doesn't the Republican Party fear being associated so closely with a man, and a firm, whose record is less than fully aboveboard? That's not clear; generally, Republicans say that many of the accusations of voter fraud being leveled at them by Democrats right now are not substantive, that they're part of a campaign to cast doubt over the election before it occurs, in order to contest the results if Kerry loses.
But this theory isn't credible; it's hard to look at what Nathan Sproul's firm has done, and what it's accused of doing, and conclude that the controversy is all part of a Democratic campaign. Clearly, Sproul's firm coached employees to lie to voters. "That's not how the country operates," Grossfeld says. "Trying to suppress registration is antithetical to what this country's about. For all of the flag waving that comes out of folks like that, to engage in that kind of behavior is just disgusting."
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