March 12, 2007
Lobbying the Activist Community
Based on a CounterPunch article by STEPHEN CONN

Many progressives and peace activists who helped stop Ralph Nader during the 2004 elections have not realized it yet, but they were used as pawns by the corporate interests of the two major parties.

Antiwar activists, feminists and environmentalists who enthusiastically rode the Oldaker-Brandon-Moffett train over Ralph Nader and his antiwar, progressive agenda must have been a great source of amusement to occupants of boardrooms, corporate law firms, and palaces around the world. Who would have guessed that progressives would be such naive and willing instruments of their own destruction in such a plan?

1. After months of research, fundraising and development of a detailed plan, anti-Nader Democrats launched a two pronged attack on the Nader campaign in meetings with party leaders from Washington state, New Mexico and elsewhere during the Democratic Convention (David Postman, "Nader foes seek funding from Democratic donors," Seattle Times. July 28, 2004).

2. The first prong was a nationwide preemptive attack on voters who might choose Nader at the polls. The Democratic Party would field law firms to challenge Nader's access to state ballots with ubiquitous law suits that would deplete his resources and limit his candidacy.

America's lawyer was about to get "papered." The plan was that Nader and his grassroots campaign would be sued to death.

3. The second prong was a campaign to insinuate and perpetuate a lie that was found most effective by polling and focus groups, that Ralph Nader was a "tool of right wing Republicans."

4. For this purpose "The Ballot Project Inc." took its modest initial funding from former Monsanto CEO and genetic farming proponent Robert Shapiro, with another $25,000, (an amount far in excess of legislated campaign finance limits), from West Coast Democratic money man, Max Palevsky.

5. This 527c group, officially called, 'Focus on Ballot Qualifications, Inc.,' was created in June, 2004 by candidate Wesley Clark's former counsel - now - Kerry supporter, William C. Oldaker, the former Federal Elections Commission General Counsel, an elections law strategist and longtime Democratic insider.

6. Oldaker is a partner in the Democratic law firm Oldaker, Biden and Belair and founding principal of the newly formed National Group.

The National Group clients, including the Bituminous Coal Association, Delta Air, Corning Glass, Equifax and Neuralstem Biopharmaceuticals (which Oldaker co-founded) regularly seek largess and other special favors from government of the kind Nader has long denounced.

(Note: consolidated client list for some of the principles in this scheme here.)

7. The Ballot Project Inc. coordinated the anti-Nader ballot access project with hundreds of lawyers throughout the country, including the banking, drug and advertising industries' favorite, Republican law firm Reed Smith in Pennsylvania, and General Motors' and tobacco giant, Brown and Williamson's defense attorneys, Kirkland and Ellis, in Ohio.

Partners in both the aforementioned firms fought Nader's ballot access tooth and nail, logging hundreds of thousands of dollars in partner hours in their effort.

There has not been a single question raised from mainstream reporters as to how corporate attorneys of such prominence could justify their pro bono efforts to restive, paying corporate clients around the world.

Partners in both Reed Smith and Kirkland and Ellis were quoted extensively and favorably in the New York Times and elsewhere as they portrayed themselves as self-appointed guardians of the ballot against the likes of Ralph Nader.

Reed Smith, a major corporate law firm from Pennsylvania that has battled Nader over advertising pitched at children, provided 12 attorneys including 7 partners and billed 1,300+ hours to keep Nader off the ballot.

(Ed. note: May, 2005 Reed Smith has pulled the press release -- formerly linked in the preceding paragraph -- from their web site. This Google inquiry shows they were too late to effectively cover their tracks.)

Kirkland and Ellis, Ken Starr's law firm, which represents General Motors and other major corporate players, lead the anti-Nader effort in Ohio. (Ken Starr, if you've forgotten, was the lead Clinton-stalker of Whitewater fame.)

Curiously, no journalistic suspicions about this coordinated investment in "good government" high-mindedness among top corporate law and lobbying firms have been raised, nor have journalists noticed the profound absence of the involvement on the other side by civil libertarian groups who might have rushed to defend the would-be Nader voters' Constitutional rights.

The second prong, aimed at voters in states where Nader could not be kept from the ballot or where he was a write-in candidate, force fed voters with the most effective lies possible, discovered in extensive research by Bill Clinton pollster, Stanley Greenberg, that Nader was funded and controlled and "in bed with" right wing Republicans.

8. This agitprop campaign needed some visible juice to spread the lies. A Kerry PAC called "United Progressives for Victory" was set up in June by Oldaker, housed in the DC offices of Robert Brandon and Associates, 1730 Rhode Island Ave. suite 712, the same office to house "The Ballot Project."

(Ed. note: May, 2005 -- These guys are crawling back under their rocks. The United Progressives for Victory site appears to have been tanken down. Try this Google search.)

9. Robert M. Brandon is a typical DC public relations flack who sings whatever song is placed in his mouth with a check. (Brandon client list)

(Ed. note: January, 2005 Note that Bob Brandon has massaged his web site image since first publication of this story. He is no longer bragging about his corporate clients quite so vigorously. To look at him now, why you would think he was a regular guy. Please! See the sidebar under items 8 and 9 )

In "open letters," full of boilerplate focus-group language circulated to national and state progressives, Robert Brandon portrayed Nader as a figurehead of the Republican right and as a "divider" of the progressive movement. Then they try the money issue.

Yes, though registered Republicans accounted for a full quarter of his votes in the 2000 election, the Center for Responsive Politics has long concluded that this year, no more than 4% of Nader funds come from Republicans.

Moreover, this $111,700 was from more than 700 individuals who gave for whatever reason. (And to many observers, it is far from clear what motivates Republicans to do many of the things they do.) What's more, these same 700 gave the Democrats more money than they gave Nader/Camejo—$146,000 to $111,700. Hey, Democrats, what's up with that? Are you going to denounce YOUR swag from these same 700 individuals?

It is a matter of public record that there was no organized group donations from the right at all, and Brandon knew it. The Democrats, at war against Nader, found truth an easy victim.

Sadly, by now, many antiwar activists and progressives across the country had piled on to the calculated Brandon smear campaign. There was no serious fact checking when these wild anti-Nader stories first started surfacing.

(Ed. note: May, 2005 The link provided above is from our archive and is not fully functional. But the names are still there. It is easy to see why this page was taken down. Certainly, few of these people want to be associated with this dirty operation, now that the truth is coming out.)

It's was clear by mid-October that bipartisan corporatists were chewing up their longtime nemesis, Ralph Nader. But in June and July, as Brandon and others ramped up their campaign of lies and slurs and partial truths and innuendo, as if by magic, this body of stories seemed to take on a life of its own.

But then, isn't that what successful lobbyists do? -- bring their target group around, step by step, until the required point of view is accepted fact? And these guys are good. That's why they get paid the big bucks.

Sadly, for many of our progressive "leaders," these efforts were successful beyond imagination. The pack effect of "me-too-ism" got to where anything negative heard or said about Nader seemed plausible.

Based on these often illogical and sometimes outrageous claims, many people from our frightened progressive community enlisted themselves actively in this attack, some as well-meaning water carriers, but others as vocal standard bearers.

10. Media spokesmen for both the Ballot Project and United Progressives for Victory were Robert M. Brandon and Toby Moffett.

Moffett is a former Monsanto official, now lobbyist for foreign countries, the Cayman Islands, Turkey (at $1.8 million a year) and the Kingdom of Morocco, defense contractors like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and McDermott International, a Houston oil drilling firm interested in asbestos liability immunity.

Moffett is a partner in the Republican law firm Livingston Group and also in its Livingston-Moffett International Group Practice. It should be pointed out that this Livingston is "Bob" Livingston, as in former Republican Speaker of the House during the Clinton impeachment.

Moffett makes big money for his clients from the war and occupation of Iraq. One Moffett client is British firm, De La Rue. It secured contracts to print new Iraqi money and travel documents through Moffett's efforts. The Livingston group guided Turkey to its lucrative billion dollar plus foreign aid alliance with the Bush administration.

Nader cited Moffett for turning the Democratic Leadership Council into a corporate bag man for the party.

Apparently the corporate clients of Oldaker and Moffett saw a smooth fit between this strategy of their agents to deny Nader ballot access and their own desires to discredit Nader's anti-corporate agenda. As a bonus they got to discredit the entire progressive movement at the same time - and this whether Kerry got elected or not!

Anyone who now reviews the client lists of the Livingston Group or The National Groups web site -- will clearly see that this anti-Nader crusade, designed and orchestrated by the Democrats, was a clear extension of the Oldaker and Moffett clients' natural desire to maintain and extend their corporate influence, whether in a new Kerry administration, or a second Bush term.

Hatred of the progressive agenda and of Ralph's persistent public meddling in corporate matters created a most happy coincidence of self-interest for these corporate clients and their attorneys. They shared enthusiasm for beating up on Nader in the courts and in the press.

Considering who they were, Kirkland and Ellis' clients, General Motors and the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, and 29 of the top 30 big banks and 9 of the top 10 drug companies -- all represented by Reed and Smith -- they stood to only gain from conflict within the progressive movement.

Not yet knowing, and not really caring the outcome of the presidential race, these law firms invested vast professional resources in the destruction of Nader and his reputation. Their work was to ease the way for their corporate clients. Hopefully, Nader's Washington influence has been diminished to give them full value for their efforts.  Thank you, Michael Moore, Mother Jones and The Nation, Eric Alterman and Norman Solomon, etc..

And what of these Anybody-but-Bush progressives who supported the effort by signing on to anti-Nader letters drafted by Brandon and Associates for the United Progressives?

Perhaps, for them, the end justified the means. Most charitably, they were fooled and they merely went along with people they trusted.

But whether they were duped by the Brandon campaign, or they chose this direction on their own, they were clearly used by corporate interests whom they certainly disagreed with. Nader's message was, after all, our own.

Antiwar activists, feminists and environmentalists who enthusiastically rode the Oldaker-Brandon-Moffett train over Ralph Nader and his antiwar, progressive agenda must have been a great source of amusement to occupants of boardrooms, corporate law firms, and palaces around the world.

Who would have guessed that progressives would be such naive and willing instruments of their own destruction in this plan carried forward by acknowledged advocates for multinational and foreign national agenda?

Our former ignorance of this well-played scheme -- with its links back to the Democratic party leadership, the corporations, their lawyers and lobbyists, -- can no longer be an excuse. Any of us could have surfed the Web and connected these dots. Now true progressives will do so, and to our dismay.

Based on a CounterPunch article by STEPHEN CONN

Stephen Conn is a retired Professor of Justice at the University of Alaska.

Open letter to Eric Alterman and the "anybody but Bush" community of ex-progressives by Greg Bates Just who is "Bush's useful idiot", really?   A letter "The Nation" magazine refused to print

12 warning signs of Fascism

Majority Visibility Project—Seattle

Copyright © 2007 Majority Visibility Project - Seattle We are activists, not business people selling gee-gaws on the Internet. These visibility images are political tools and weapons and are meant to be used as such by our community. In this light, MVP hereby grants individuals and not-for-profit groups use of our designs and photo images for NON-commercial purposes with no further notice required. All other rights reserved.