A piece on Charlie Black in the Tampa paper..it gives some bio details in addition to the unsavory world leaders for whom he lobbied..
After law school at American University, Black got involved in a bitter 1973 fight for national chairman of the College Republicans, a fight that continued until it was settled by George H.W. Bush, then chairman of the national Republican Party.
The winner was Rove. Black's candidate, Dolan, later joined him and Stone[Roger] in founding the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which quickly became known for harsh, heavy-spending attacks on Democratic members of Congress.
www2.tbo.com
Top McCain Adviser Is Ultimate Insider
By WILLIAM MARCH
The Tampa Tribune
Published: July 2, 2008
Updated:
TAMPA - Despite John McCain's carefully cultivated image as a maverick who puts principle over politics, his top campaign adviser is a Washington lobbyist who has been the consummate Republican political insider for decades, known for sometimes representing unsavory clients.
He has worked for the nation's largest and most powerful corporations and politicians, but also for controversial figures ranging from dictators in developing nations to a Medicare-defrauding Florida health management company.
Recently, Charlie Black, a University of Florida graduate, made headlines of his own.
He told a magazine interviewer that a terrorist attack on the United States would help McCain win. That's a straightforward political calculation, but not something candidates or advisers can say aloud.
McCain disavowed the comment and Black apologized. But it's the kind of thinking that's commonplace among those accustomed to the pragmatic realities of politics.
That certainly describes Black.
Black, 60, has been intimately involved in nearly every Republican presidential campaign, and many major Florida campaigns, for decades.
In this campaign, he is widely credited with reviving McCain's campaign when it seemed moribund last summer, reaching out to conservatives for support and setting the strategy that focused on winning New Hampshire.
"In every election, he's been associated with one of the major candidates, and sometimes when his guy didn't win, he'd end up working for the other guy. It's not easy to carry that off," said former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez, for whom Black has done political work.
He attributed it to Black's astute political sense, his long list of key contacts and "an instant likeability factor" projected by the soft-spoken Southerner.
"Some consultants win and are hot for a while, but then disappear," Martinez said. "Charlie Black has had staying power."
In 1984, Black founded a lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, that became one of Washington's go-to firms for those seeking to influence Republican politicians.
In 1996, the firm was subsumed in a merger to form BKSH & Associates, with Black as chairman.
In March, after criticism over the number of lobbyists involved in his campaign, McCain let several go - but Black resigned his BKSH post and stayed with the campaign.
Working For Dictators Proved Profitable
In its heyday, Black, Manafort reaped millions representing foreign clients including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Jonas Savimbi, an Angolan insurgent who won U.S. backing for a civil war against that nation's Cuban-backed government but inspired international disgust at his brutal tactics.
Those activities have made Black the target of a MoveOn.org Internet ad urging that McCain fire him.
The McCain campaign said Black couldn't be made available for an interview. A McCain campaign spokesman did not respond to a request to discuss Black's role.
Black has told other interviewers the firm cleared its foreign clients with the U.S. State Department and refused to serve them if it wasn't in U.S. interests. The firm, he says, dumped Marcos and Sese Seko when they refused to accept election results and hung onto their offices, opposing U.S. wishes.
Still, in 1992, the government watchdog group Center for Public Integrity listed the firm fourth among the top five firms in what it called the "Torturer's Lobby" - firms that got big lobbying fees from governments accused of human rights violations.
In addition to Marcos and Savimbi, the center cited the firm's work for the governments of General Ibrahim Babangida in Nigeria and President Daniel arap Moi in Kenya.
In the 1980s, the firm represented developers involved in Department of Housing and Urban Development scandals involving use of political influence in getting housing grants. Black's partner, Paul Manafort, openly described one deal as "influence peddling" in congressional testimony.
The scandals led to criminal convictions of numerous HUD officials, but no accusations of illegality against the firm.
Other controversial clients of Black, Manafort and BKSH include:
•Miguel Recarey of Miami, founder of International Medical Centers, who used lobbying influence - including that of Jeb Bush - to obtain permission to serve large numbers of Medicare clients in his HMO. He fled the country in 1988 after being charged with bribery and fraud, and investigators found $200 million or more in tax money missing.
•Ahmed Chalabi, former Iraqi government official and head of an Iraqi exile group. Prior to the Iraq war, it provided information to U.S. intelligence agencies - much of it later called false - linking Saddam Hussein to weapons of mass destruction.
•Blackwater USA, a private security firm accused of use of excessive force in Iraq.
One Black, Manafort member and longtime ally of Black, political strategist Roger Stone of Miami, is a legendary political dirty tricks artist, who has jokingly referred to himself as "the prince of darkness." His history dates to Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President, best known for its involvement in the Watergate break-in.
Another member was Lee Atwater, a GOP political consultant known as Karl Rove's mentor in attack campaigning.
Their presence lent the firm an image as the bad boys of conservative Republican politics.
It also had ties to Democrats through firm member Peter Kelly, a high-level Democratic fundraiser and Bill Clinton loyalist.
It Started In '64 With Barry Goldwater
Black, Atwater and Stone were part of a generation of very conservative Republican young people who went against the grain of the student leftism of the 1960s and '70s and became known as young Turks in the party - a generation that included Rove, right-wing political operative Terry Dolan and others.
A North Carolina native, Black has said he fell in love with politics as a high school student during the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign.
Prior to earning his bachelor's degree in political science in 1969, he and a group of conservative students at UF took over the student Republican organization from a comparatively moderate Youth for Rockefeller group, according to a New York Times profile. Black then worked on Nixon's 1968 campaign.
After law school at American University, Black got involved in a bitter 1973 fight for national chairman of the College Republicans, a fight that continued until it was settled by George H.W. Bush, then chairman of the national Republican Party.
The winner was Rove. Black's candidate, Dolan, later joined him and Stone in founding the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which quickly became known for harsh, heavy-spending attacks on Democratic members of Congress.
From then on, Black was a national-level player in GOP politics.
He became one of the first paid staff members of Ronald Reagan's unsuccessful 1976 presidential campaign, then was a senior adviser on both of Reagan's winning 1980 and 1984 races.
In 1988, Black began the election cycle as campaign manager for Congressman Jack Kemp, but after Kemp's primary loss, he became a prominent figure in Bush's campaign.
Black later worked as chief spokesman for the Republican National Committee in 1990; principal public spokesman for Bush's 1992 campaign; and a senior adviser and spokesman for George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
But the McCain campaign has raised Black's political profile as high as it has been in years, as the public face of the campaign, appearing regularly in interviews and on Sunday morning political talk shows.
In fact, in February, when McCain was defending himself after a controversial New York Times story about his ties to lobbyists, the man who went on "Face The Nation" to defend him was Black - the lobbyist.
Reporter William March can be reached at (813) 259-7761 or wmarch@tampatrib.com. |
