Liberals launch anti-Darrell Issa crusade
By JAKE SHERMAN & JOHN BRESNAHAN
| 2/15/11
politico.com
Democrats are understandably obsessed with Darrell Issa — he’s built himself up as a one-man investigative machine aimed straight at the Obama presidency.
But a handful of liberal political operatives in California — including a former Hillary Clinton hand — are taking their anti-Issa passion to a whole new level, launching a nonprofit group, a website and even paid media advertisements aimed at undermining and investigating the rabble-rousing chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
They say they’re leaving no stone unturned in digging into Issa’s personal and business history. This week, the group will reveal more than 100 pages about an investigation into a fire that burned down a building that housed his business in the early 1980s.
The launch of this group — which calls itself The Third Lantern, and is naming the website the Issa Files — is remarkable because it’s wholly focused on the activities of one lawmaker who has no immediate plans to run for higher office. The purpose of this new group is to make public documents more public, make life difficult for Issa and sow seeds of doubt on his investigations.
They plan to run TV advertisements and other paid media in the future, saying they already have a “significant commitment” of cash. A spokesman for Issa, Kurt Bardella, dismissed the effort as a “misguided and distasteful smear campaign against Chairman Issa.”
The group will be run by the principals of SCN Strategies, a San Francisco-based consulting firm that produced ads last cycle for California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). One of those deeply involved is Averell “Ace” Smith — who ran Hillary Clinton’s successful 2008 California and Texas primary operations and is known as one of the more cutthroat political operatives in the business.
Dan Newman of SCN Strategies, one of the three people leading the anti-Issa campaign, declines to disclose how much is being spent on the effort or who is bankrolling it, telling POLITICO it is being paid for by “patriotic Americans who don’t want to see the potential of an ethically challenged congressional investigator run amok with McCarthyesque fishing expeditions.”
The structure of the organization does not require that it disclose its funding.
But the goal is clear: Newman, Smith and the third partner, Sean Clegg, want to raise enough questions about Issa’s background and personal history that anything he turns up in probes of the Obama administration will be immediately discredited.
“The purpose of the Issa Files is to shine a bright light on Darrell Issa, his past and his present, in a very fact-based and document-based manner to give the public a chance to learn the facts and see the documents that speak to Issa’s character and credibility and lack thereof,” Newman told POLITICO in an interview. “And to better understand who is this guy who is demanding so many documents and delving into so many investigations — a chance for the public to learn about him and perhaps whether or not he has the character to conduct these investigations.”
“We’re also going to have an active research element, communications strategy, paid media,” Newman added. “We’ll plan in a targeted manner.”
Newman said they will “make sure the public has a chance to investigate the investigator. To understand what he’s made of, where he comes from and what level of integrity and credibility he has and does not have.”
The anti-Issa nonprofit is stating that its mission is oppose unnecessary congressional probes.
“The specific purpose of the corporation shall be to advocate on behalf of middle-income Americans on issues such as health care, taxes and jobs, and to advocate against unwarranted and expensive congressional investigations meant to derail the gains middle-income Americans have recently won in these areas,” the articles of incorporation read.
Smith, who has also worked in dozens of political campaigns, has a reputation as a specialist in opposition research. Laura Talmus, his wife, is a major fundraiser for progressive groups in the Golden State. A 2008 Los Angeles Times profile of Smith carried the headline “He’s the man to fear — unless he’s on your side.”
“Ace is a very serious guy,” said a California Democratic consultant, speaking on condition of anonymity. “If Ace is involved, then it means there may be some serious resources involved” in this effort.
Clegg was a senior adviser and deputy mayor for communications and strategy under Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He also has taken part in campaigns of former California Gov. Gray Davis, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri, according to a biography on the company’s website.
Bardella, the Issa spokesman, points out that President Barack Obama made special note of the need to improve the political tone in Washington in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), and this organization doesn’t follow that message.
“The American people are not interested in this kind of destructive, politics-as-usual attack that only serves to advance an agenda of divisiveness and pettiness,” Bardella said in a statement to POLITICO. “It’s beyond hypocritical for the very people embarking on this misguided and distasteful smear campaign against Chairman Issa to refuse to disclose where their funding is coming from. It makes you wonder what they have to hide. At the end of the day, these political consultants will do whatever they are going to do, but it just flies in the face of what the American people are interested in hearing about.”
Democrats in Washington are quiet on the project. A spokesman for Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, said that “Rep. Cummings is focused on creating jobs, preventing illegal foreclosures and making government work more effectively and efficiently for American taxpayers. He hopes to work with Chairman Issa in a bipartisan manner whenever he can to add value to the lives of all Americans.”
This is only the latest in a series of very bright lights shined on Issa. During the campaign season, Democrats, in several instances, ran against the specter of Issa having unfettered subpoena power. Earlier this year, The New Yorker ran a lengthy profile that detailed a series of controversial incidents in Issa’s past, all of which had been previously reported, coupled with unseemly quotations from his spokesman — an episode that ruffled feathers in the GOP leadership.
This is not the only website dedicated to beating up on Issa. The California-based Courage Campaign operates a website called Issa Watch, which “tracks Darrell Issa’s public record as well as the ongoing investigations and hearings he’s involved with as chairman of the House Oversight Committee.”
For now, Republicans are brushing off this effort as a nuisance.
“Anytime a member becomes as aggressive as Issa has, you have to balance that with the recognition that the opposing political side is going to launch everything they have ... against you,” another senior GOP aide said. |
