ustxtxb_obs_2004_11_19_50_00017-00000_000.pdf

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Wad onion at Iodise atria riles these marilin Roy nay I. pristall Ns, WO say Isar as ries ran by It IMMO II littir Sent NISI, N 11,1101111 lads ill, but for statewide office, you can’t win without one. I think Democrats need that magnetic personality, more so than Republicans, to draw them in so that they can overlook their differences. A candidate should be able to get people to help them based not solely on agreement over issues, but on the ability and desire to implement policies to get what the voters want. In the case of special interests, they will approach a candidate with a magnetic personality very differently. They seek more ironclad commitments from a candidate with less charisma before offering their assistance. TO: You have said campaigns have to change. How? MT: From a tactical basis, our campaigns have to be structured to win. Marketing companies don’t take a “one size fits all” approach. Campaigns can’t be like that either. People buy products for different reasons, just like people vote for candidates for different reasons, so a campaign should be very segmented. If you want to win because you feel that your public policy will help people more than your opponent’s, then you have to start looking at people as individuals. It’s not one message that goes to everybody. It’s a message for that person. Democrats have the capability to do this as never before. Te chnolo gy n ow helps us to communicate to individuals as never before. You have computers where you can crunch data ten different ways. It means that in campaigns, more people have to be empowered to make decisions and shape the necessary budget to be effective rather than have one consulting mail house that does mail for everybody. If our diversity is our strength, then we have to figure out how to use that diversity and appeal to it. DeLay, continued from page 9 left the council, Langley delivered the memo to Poncho Lovelin. He also had it delivered to David Sickey, a 25-year-old council member who had just won a council seat after running a reform campaign. Sickey has become the most vocal and public critic of the huge fees paid the lobbyists. He is supported on the council by Harold John, who is not as out-front as his younger colleague. The money derived from the casino, Sickey said, “is intended for the long-term benefit of the members of this tribe.” The comptroller’s memoas have many Coushatta documentsfound its way into the hands of Shawn Martin, a reporter who works in the DeRidder Bureau of the Lake Charles American Press. Martin had already made the Press the newspaper of record for Coushatta reporting. The Press had the lobby story months before it broke in the Washington Post in February of last year and began the ongoing Senate Indian Affairs investigation. Martin’s reporting in the regional Louisiana paper with a circulation of 45,000 provided a roadmap for reporters hampered by the sovereign status of Indian tribes, which are not subject to state open records acts or the federal Freedom of Information Act. American Press accounts of excessive lobbying and PR fees are confirmed by a set of Capitol Campaign Strategies invoices obtained by the Observer, which total $7,155,000for a period between January and October of 2002. Capitol Campaign Strategies is the public relations firm owned by Scanlon; however, the company’s address-611 Pennsylvania Avenue SEis a mail drop. As a public relations firm it is not subject to disclosure laws that would have pertained to Abramoff, a registered lobbyist. Each CCS invoice, four approved by Poncho and one by Worfel, is as stunning in its lack of itemized detail as in its amount. Entered on each invoice is only the date submitted, the description “professional services,” and the amount owed. The largest single billing, dated March 13, 2002, is $3,405,000.00. When Abram . off’s monthly retainer of $150,000 is added to the total, the Coushattas paid $8,655,000 for ten months of lobbying and public relations. To put that figure into perspective, General Electric paid two dozen lobbying firms $30.4 million, according to federal records compiled by The Washington Post, over the same three-year period that the Coushattas contracted with Abramoff and Scanlon. In the 10-month period for which we found records, the 813-member Coushatta tribe was paying approximately the same amount of money for lobbying as one of the world’s largest corporations. At the end of their three-year relationship with Abramoff and Scanlon, the Coushattas actually outspent GE by about $3 million. continued on page 18 11/19/04 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 17