Bloomberg Pushes Moderates in National Races/G.O.P. Insider Fuels Tea Party and Suspicion

Bloomberg Pushes Moderates in National Races
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/nyregion/19bloomberg.html?_r=1&th&emc=th



PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In an election year when anger and mistrust have upended races across the country, toppling moderates and elevating white-hot partisans, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is trying to pull politics back to the middle, injecting himself into marquee contests and helping candidates fend off the Tea Party.

New York’s billionaire mayor, whose flurry of activity is stirring a new round of speculation about his presidential ambitions, is supporting Republicans, Democrats and independents who he says are not bound by rigid ideology and are capable of compromise, qualities he says he fears have become alarmingly rare in American politics.

Next month, Mr. Bloomberg will travel to California to campaign for Meg Whitman, the eBay entrepreneur and Republican running for governor on a platform of corporate-style accountability and fiscal prudence. He visited Rhode Island on Thursday to champion Lincoln D. Chafee, a Republican turned independent who is locked in a three-way battle for the governor’s office.

And, in perhaps the mayor’s most direct confrontation with a Tea Party candidacy, he will host a fund-raiser at his Manhattan town house for Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader facing an unexpectedly forceful challenge from Sharron E. Angle, a political neophyte backed by Sarah Palin.

In his first extensive interview with a newspaper in several years, Mr. Bloomberg outlined his plans, which will include raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for candidates and represent his greatest involvement in a national election since he entered public life a decade ago.

Mr. Bloomberg described the Tea Party movement as a fad, comparing it to the short-lived burst of support for Ross Perot in 1992. The mayor suggested that the fury it had unleashed was not a foundation for leadership.

“Look, people are angry,” he said. “Their anger is understandable. Washington isn’t working. Government seems to be paralyzed and unable to solve all of our problems.”

“Anger, however, is not a government strategy,” he said. “It’s not a way to govern.”

Mr. Bloomberg said he wanted to see more of the cooperation once displayed by Senators Orrin G. Hatch and Edward M. Kennedy.

He said that he would not have voted for either of them (“one because he’s too liberal for me, one because he’s too conservative for me”), but added, “These two guys who went into the Senate together and were the closest of personal friends for 40 years, they were everything that democracy says a senator should be.”

In the last election, Mr. Bloomberg, the nation’s most prominent and wealthiest independent elected official, explored the possibility of a presidential run but concluded that the moment was not right for a third-party candidacy. But his plunge back into national politics suggests he is once again seeking to elevate his profile and test the viability of running as a centrist problem solver.

Mike Murphy, a Republican political strategist who is advising Ms. Whitman’s campaign, called Mr. Bloomberg “a very special breed.”

“People see him not through a Democratic or Republican prism, but through a results, grown-up, get-it-fixed, make-it-work prism, which is very attractive,” Mr. Murphy said. “He has a very wide appeal.”

Asked about a White House bid, the mayor forcefully dismissed the idea that he would run but sounded restless, acknowledging he was casting about for a new career after City Hall. But he said the presidency was the only job he would want in Washington.

“I don’t know what the next thing is,” Mr. Bloomberg said, stressing that he would not be interested in serving as Treasury secretary or anything else in an Obama cabinet. “I am not an adviser; I am not an analyst,” he said. “You know, I am a doer.”

President Obama has been publicly courting Mr. Bloomberg recently, inviting him to play golf on Martha’s Vineyard and dispatching Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to Gracie Mansion to seek the mayor’s views on the economy.

Still, asked whether he would endorse Mr. Obama for re-election now, Mr. Bloomberg declined to do so, and said his friends in business felt “vilified” by the federal government.

But during a week in which the Republican Party experienced searing defeats at the hands of Tea Party activists, it was Mr. Bloomberg’s remarks about the movement that were especially striking.

“I think these boomlets come along when the public is dissatisfied,” he said. “There was a Ross Perot boomlet, there was a John McCain boomlet, there’s the Tea Party boomlet.”

Mr. Bloomberg added, “It isn’t like people are going to gravitate towards one of these boomlet — splinter might not be quite the right word, since it might have other connotations — but the small nouveau parties.”

Eventually, the mayor said, “people go back to the major parties.”

His endorsements hinge on several factors — a person’s level of independence and record on immigration and guns — but that approach has aligned him with at least five candidates facing Tea Party-favored opponents.

Mr. Bloomberg has endorsed a Democrat, John Hickenlooper, for governor of Colorado, whose rival, Dan Maes, has called for the deportation of illegal immigrants and decried a bicycle-sharing program as a threat to personal freedom. The mayor supports Senator Michael F. Bennet, another Colorado Democrat, who is running against the Tea Party-backed Republican Ken Buck.

The mayor has endorsed Mark S. Kirk, an Illinois Republican running for the Senate who beat back a Tea Party primary candidate, and he is supporting Joe Sestak, a Pennsylvania Democrat, for the Senate. Mr. Sestak faces an uphill fight against Pat Toomey, a Tea Party challenger. In Nevada, Mr. Bloomberg has embraced Mr. Reid, whose challenger, Ms. Angle, wants to phase out Social Security.

But a blessing from the mayor could create a backlash. In Nevada, where Republicans are seeking to portray Mr. Reid as too cozy with Wall Street, Jahan Wilcox, a spokesman for the state party, said that a fund-raiser at the mayor’s home “will only remind Nevadans of how well he’s represented New York’s interests in Washington.”

Levi Russell, a spokesman for the Tea Party Express, which helped defeat Michael N. Castle, a Republican whom Mr. Bloomberg backed in Tuesday’s Delaware primary, said the mayor was “doing everything possible to maintain the status quo — to keep old names in power.” He added that Mr. Bloomberg was “out of touch with the zeitgeist.”

But those seeking Mr. Bloomberg’s endorsement say that voters are not simply angry; they want solutions to problems, and that the mayor represents a government that, by all accounts, works well. Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a Democrat who won the mayor’s backing for re-election this year, said voters were “sick of partisanship and they want us to deliver.”

“Mayor Bloomberg speaks to that desire in a powerful way,” he said.

Mr. Sestak said he hoped the support of a mayor who values an apolitical style would prompt Pennsylvania voters to question the Tea Party’s brand of elbows-out conservatism. “It’s a way of saying, ‘Let’s think this through,’ ” he said, adding, “There is too much extremism right now.”

Candidates across the country are pursuing the mayor. In Connecticut, both nominees for governor have sought his assistance. One Congressional candidate offered to fly to New York to be photographed with him.

In the interview, Mr. Bloomberg radiated enthusiasm about his chance to have an impact on national politics and reveled in his own status as a rare popular incumbent. (A recent New York Times poll showed that nearly 60 percent of city voters approve of the job he is doing.)

In Providence a few days ago, Mr. Chafee’s campaign treated Mr. Bloomberg’s endorsement like a visit from a head of state. A ballroom at the Biltmore Hotel was booked for the event, and the mayor was given a police escort.

Even if Mr. Bloomberg never runs for president, an ill-fated quest for several New York mayors, he remains enough of a force — especially in the business world — that senior White House officials seem determined to co-opt him, through flattery and attention.

Asked about the wooing by the White House, Mr. Bloomberg suggested that the Obama administration, in publicly reaching out to him, was trying to telegraph its understanding of voter unrest and disgust with party bickering.

The mayor, who started out as a Democrat, then became a Republican and later an independent, said Mr. Obama was seeking “to be seen to be, if not reaching across the aisle, at least reaching out for an independent view.”

“It was a good time to be a Democrat at one point, and it was a good time to be a Republican at one point,” he said. “Today, it’s a good time to be an independent.”

Relishing his access to Mr. Obama and the status it has bestowed on him, Mr. Bloomberg added, “He doesn’t invite very many people to play golf.”

Asked to grade Mr. Obama’s leadership and his record in office, the mayor was careful to not criticize the president directly. “He’s had a tough row to hoe, in all fairness,” he said. But he hinted at the resentment of his fellow corporate chieftains toward government officials like Mr. Obama, who have questioned Wall Street compensation.

“I feel very strongly we should not be — success should not be frowned on, and I have lots of friends, wealthy people, made a lot of money, were big Obama supporters, gave him money, raised money for him, who are not happy now,” he said.

“They all say the same thing: ‘I knew I was going to have to pay more taxes. Somebody’s got to do it, and I’ve got the money,’ ” he said. “ ‘But I didn’t expect to be vilified.’ ”




G.O.P. Insider Fuels Tea Party and Suspicion
By JANIE LORBER and ERIC LIPTON
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/us/politics/19russo.html?th&emc=th


WASHINGTON — In the days leading up to the Delaware primary, Sal Russo hosted a radio fund-raiser, organized a political rally and pressed the case with reporters that Christine O’Donnell was the Tea Party’s choice for the United States Senate. He also set off what he calls a “money bomb,” pouring at least $250,000 into television and other advertisements promoting the little-known candidate.

Sal Russo, standing, on a Tea Party Express tour in April. His group is the largest independent supporter of Tea Party candidates.

With Ms. O’Donnell’s upset victory in the Republican primary on Tuesday, Mr. Russo, the chief strategist behind an upstart group called the Tea Party Express, had racked up another win.

But in becoming one of the movement’s most successful players by helping Tea Party favorites oust incumbents or trounce rivals in four states, Mr. Russo is also fast becoming among the most divisive.

Unlike many of the newly energized outsiders who have embraced Tea Party ideals, Mr. Russo, 63, is a longtime Republican operative who got his start as an aide to Ronald Reagan and later raised money and managed media strategy for a string of other politicians, including former Gov. George E. Pataki of New York. His history and spending practices have prompted some former employees and other Tea Party activists to question whether he is committed to, or merely exploiting, their cause.

Mr. Russo’s group, based in California, is now the single biggest independent supporter of Tea Party candidates, raising more than $5.2 million in donations since January 2009, according to federal records. But at least $3 million of that total has since been paid to Mr. Russo’s political consulting firm or to one controlled by his wife, according to federal records.

While most of that money passed through the firms to cover advertising and other expenses, that kind of self-dealing raises red flags about possible lax oversight and excessive fees for the firms, campaign finance experts said.

“They are the classic top-down organization run by G.O.P. consultants, and it is the antithesis of what the Tea Party movement is about,” said Mark Meckler, a national spokesman for Tea Party Patriots, a coalition of grass-roots organizations that does not endorse or contribute to candidates.

Mr. Russo’s group is also under attack from Republican Party leaders in Delaware, who have accused the Tea Party Express of improperly collaborating with Ms. O’Donnell’s campaign. Federal laws allow political action committees to support candidates independently, but they are not permitted to coordinate their spending with campaigns.

Mr. Russo dismisses all the criticism, saying he and his group have done nothing wrong. The Delaware party leaders are simply poor losers, he says, and his Tea Party critics are envious of his success.

“We are totally dependent on our donors,” Mr. Russo said in an interview. “We can’t do anything unless they support what we do.” He refers to some Tea Party activists who fault him over his political résumé as “nuts and crackpots.”

Friends credit Mr. Russo with knowing how to identify promising candidates and seize on hot issues. But they acknowledge that the Tea Party Express has brought real benefits to him, too.

“Sal Russo is a smart consultant and a great entrepreneur,” said Mark Abernathy, a Republican consultant in California who has known Mr. Russo for more than two decades. “He’s doing well by doing good.”

The rise of the Tea Party Express can be traced to tax-filing day in 2009, when disparate groups around the nation organized what they called “tea parties” to protest government spending.

Within a day, Joe Wierzbicki, a senior associate at Mr. Russo’s firm, Russo Marsh & Associates in Sacramento, sketched out a proposal to latch onto the nascent Tea Party movement, according to internal e-mails provided to The New York Times. He hoped to breathe life into the firm’s faltering political action committee, known then as Our Country Deserves Better. Donations to the committee, established during the 2008 presidential campaign in an effort to frustrate the ambitions of Barack Obama, had dropped significantly.

“Here is the plan I’ve been cooking up in my head,” Mr. Wierzbicki wrote in an e-mail to Mr. Russo. “About how we really make a big impact with the 2010 elections coming up, on the heels of the successful Tea Party push on April 15, and my desire to give a boost to our PAC and position us as a growing force/leading force.”

The plan called for a two-week road trip with an “awesome looking” luxury tour bus that would make stops in dozens of cities represented by members of Congress deemed big spenders, and therefore worthy of ouster, including two Democratic senators, Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who decided to retire this year amid faltering poll numbers.

Mr. Russo has long been a fiscal and social conservative (he rebelled against his Democratic upbringing by volunteering as a college student for Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign).

In explaining the origins of the Tea Party Express, he said in the interview: “There were millions of people frustrated and angry at the country and the direction Barack Obama and Democrats were taking us. They were at home throwing their slippers at the TV news and mumbling to their spouse. If they got off the couch and engaged in political process, they could make a difference.”

Since last July, the Tea Party Express has made three bus tours around the country. And its fund-raising — much of it coming from donors contributing $20 to $50 — has proved remarkably successful, equipping Mr. Russo with a hefty war chest. As in Delaware, the group has moved into states and paid for media blitzes for favored candidates in the final weeks before voting.

During this election cycle, the Tea Party Express has spent nearly $1 million in Nevada alone — $547,000 to support Sharron Angle, the Republican Senate candidate, and $385,000 in opposing Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader. In Massachusetts, the group spent nearly $350,000 to back Scott Brown, now the state’s Republican senator.

The group’s reliance on Mr. Russo’s consulting firm, however, has drawn criticism from Tea Party activists and others.

Political action committees must spend money to make money, typically hiring staff members from the organizers who created the group. But it is less common for them to funnel most of their outside spending through a vendor controlled by a committee executive, as Mr. Russo has done.

Such a practice, while legal, can create a question about whether the committee — and its donors — are getting a fair price for goods and services, said Brad Smith, a former Republican appointee to the Federal Election Commission and now a professor at the Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio.

Mr. Russo estimated that Russo & Marsh, and his wife’s company, King Media Group, had been paid about $250,000 a year for their work with the Tea Party cause.

An analysis of Federal Election Commission records by The Times puts the total amount paid — for commissions, services and wages to executives and staff members — at nearly $700,000 in the last 20 months, or about 13 percent of the $5.2 million the committee has spent. (By comparison, media buyers for candidates’ campaigns typically take a 6 percent to 15 percent commission, according to one consultant.)

But the campaign finance records for the Tea Party Express also showed payments totaling more than $10,000 for stays at casino hotels, as well as bills for meals at expensive restaurants near Mr. Russo’s offices, including nearly $5,000 at Chops Steak House, which former staff members said the Tea Party Express frequented after work.

“I was kind of shocked,” said Kelly Eustis, who served as political director at the Tea Party Express until leaving last fall. “It kind of turned me off.”

Mr. Russo disputes that there was any lavish spending. “There have been a lot of cheap shots taken,” he said. “This has not been a profitable activity for us. We have plowed every penny back into this thing.”

He seems unfazed by the Federal Election Commission complaint made by Republican Party leaders in Delaware. Tom Ross, the state Republican Party chairman, charged that Mr. Russo and his team had improperly arranged for Ms. O’Donnell to speak during at least two Tea Party events in the week before the election, held closed-door meetings with Ms. O’Donnell and solicited donations to turn over to her campaign.

“Silly, silly, silliness,” Mr. Russo said dismissively.

Now, Mr. Russo is charging ahead, making plans for a fourth bus tour and gearing up for the general election fight in Alaska, Delaware, Kentucky and Nevada, among other states.

“What’s success for the Tea Party Express? I would say we’ve already achieved it,” Mr. Russo said. “Because today you can’t find a candidate running anywhere in America — Republican or Democrat — that doesn’t sound like they belong to the Tea Party movement.”



Derek Willis contributed reporting, and Kitty Bennett contributed research.