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Original Political Satire
Posted on 06/10/2004 11:19:30 AM PDT by crushkerry
Are Heinz employees working on the campaign?
A series of e-mails made available to crushkerry.com may mean trouble for the Kerry campaign and the family of charities collectively known as the Heinz Family Philanthropies. The e-mails show employees of the various Heinz Family Philanthropies are deeply involved in John Kerry’s campaign for president, specifically in the recruitment of a speech coach, campaign scheduling, campaign organization, and even the setting up of a healthcare town hall-style meeting.
The Heinz Family Philanthropies are tax-exempt charitable organizations and are forbidden to engage in partisan political activity.
The e-mails could become more evidence in what is a looming headache for the Kerry campaign, which, along with the liberal Media Fund, is the subject of a Federal Elections Commission investigation into whether or not they conspired break the new campaign finance law.
A source allowed Crushkerry.com to see some e-mail correspondences coming in and out of the Heinz Family Philanthropies. The longest and most detailed communication was between a public speaking coach and the personal assistant to Teresa Heinz which may well implicate the Heinz Family Philanthropies in some unscrupulous partisan political chicanery.
In the e-mail, dated May 19th, 2004 and addressed to a Rosemary Pauli, professional speech coach Katie Karlovitz boasted that she had already arranged to coach Peggy Kerry (John’s sister) and that she could do the same for the Senator. “The payoff will be that he’ll get more votes,” Karlovitz promises in the e-mail.
But who is Rosemary Pauli? Our investigation resulted in two different answers, one from the Heinz Family Philanthropies and a contradictory one from Pauli herself. Suspicious that Rosemary Pauli was an employee of one of the Heinz family charitable organizations, we called the main office of the Heinz Family Philanthropies. We were greeted by a polite, professional receptionist.
“Does Rosemary Pauli work for the Heinz Family Philanthropies?” we asked.
"Well ... um ... it's ... Yes, she's with the Foundation ... she's Mrs. Heinz's Special Assistant, so she's dealing with all that ..."
"And what's your name?"
Our polite receptionist suddenly turned cold, which only led us to believe we were getting warmer. So we called the number the receptionist had given us (before she turned snippy) to contact Rosemary Pauli directly. It was for a Kerry campaign headquarters in Washington DC.
We asked Rosemary directly, do you work for the campaign or the Heinz Family Philanthropies?
“The campaign,” she said.
Did she ever work for the Heinz Family Philanthropies?
“No”
At this point we were confused. The receptionist at HFP told us Rosemary Pauli was an employee of the Heinz Family Philanthropies. Pauli herself told us something different. By the way, there is no record with the Federal Elections Commission of the Kerry campaign paying a Rosemary Pauli. And Karlovitz has refused to return our calls.
Still, we hope it was Pauli who was telling the truth. We would hate to discover that a charitable organization that does some good (lot’s of bad, but some good) was jeopardizing their tax exempt status by playing political games and sharing staff.
Additional e-mail correspondence made available to crushkerry.com depicts employees of the Heinz Endowments managing Teresa Heinz’s political schedule. Specifically, Grant Oliphant and Maureen Marinelli, both employees of the Heinz Endowments, are seen pulling stings to help arrange Teresa Heinz’s political appearances. We also saw e-mails to and from a Kim O’Dell who is an employee of the Heinz Awards. The e-mails to which we were made privy show her helping the campaign to set up a town hall-style meeting on healthcare. These e-mails all took place around the period of time the Kerry's took their well-publicized vacation in Idaho.
Now, we at crushkerry.com do not offer these e-mails as a smoking gun. We could understand how Mz. Heinz’s professional staff would have to interact with her political staff at times.
But the Kerry campaign is already the subject of an FEC probe. And we’re willing to bet the employee-sharing neither begins nor ends here.
We’ll keep you posted.
Ping.
bump
good job
Evil grin ping....................... };>
The immediate response:
Who passed those emails!
That was a invasion of privacy!
There needs to be an investigation into who had access to those emails and who allowed them to be made public!
This is an outrage!
Not surprised in the least and I won't be surprised in the least that absolutely nothing will be said on media or done through the courts.
Somebody e-mail this to Drudge... STAT! :)
They sent those emails before they didn't!
Whoops!
Bump, with thanks for your hard work...Maybe Drudge would like a tip (with all credit to you)...
Move along.... Nothing to see here. Just the same law breaking dems getting away with it again (I bet).
Excellent. Have you filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission?
No, because as is said in teh article there's no "smoking gun", but rather a bunch of questions raised that need to be answered.
Wowsers!!!
What's the problem? Everybody knows by now that RATs are exempt.
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