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RINO Fixers Are Part of the GOP’s Problem - Al D'Amato and Warren Tompkins wreak havoc, north...
National Review Online ^ | February 26, 2009 | Deroy Murdock

Posted on 02/26/2009 6:35:59 PM PST by neverdem








RINO Fixers Are Part of the GOP’s Problem
Al D'Amato and Warren Tompkins wreak havoc, north and south.

By Deroy Murdock

As Republicans crawl from the wreckage of the once-mighty GOP, it is important to identify exactly who helped drive the party into a ravine. At the federal level, spendthrift former president George W. Bush and equally irresponsible pork-barrelers like Rep. Don “Bridge to Nowhere” Young made a mockery of the party’s fiscal-conservative credo. At the state level, governors like New York’s George Pataki and California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger pandered to government-employee unions and opened the spending spigots, to taxpayers’ ongoing horror.

Other culprits include the state-level influence peddlers who seem more interested in cash than in free-market and conservative principles. New York’s former U.S. senator Alfonse D’Amato is a perfect example of this breed. “Senator Pothole” personally discovered an obscure state senator, George Pataki, from Peekskill, N.Y. After being muscled through the state GOP convention, Pataki scored the party’s nomination and won the governorship in 1994. After some limited first-term tax cutting, Pataki’s spend-o-rama began, swelling the state budget 79.5 percent — from $63.3 billion in 1994 to $113.6 billion in 2006. This was nearly double the inflation rate. D’Amato served as Pataki’s chief cheerleader and arguably has become New York’s most influential Republican — to the degree that party label still fits.

D’Amato most recently raised eyebrows while he stood shoulder to shoulder with prominent New York Democrats as Gov. David Paterson introduced Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand as the Empire State’s new U.S. senator. Gillibrand replaced Hillary Clinton after she departed for the State Department. New York Republicans thought D’Amato looked perfectly at home among the state’s top donkeys.

As Wayne Barrett reported in the January 27 Village Voice, D’Amato hosted a $1,000-per-plate fundraiser for Paterson last November 2. D’Amato’s ambidexterity also led him to host a benefit for GOP senator John McCain last March.

D’Amato’s New York- and Washington-based lobbying firm, Park Strategies, has served him well. He famously earned $500,000 for making just one phone call in 2004 to persuade former Metropolitan Transit Authority chairman E. Virgil Conway to help facilitate a $230 million loan to the company that owns the bus and subway agency’s headquarters building. D’Amato’s client in that transaction, Tamir Sapir, is a partner in a company called Bayrock/Sapir. It, in turn, donated $5,000 to Paterson last September.

“Once again, D’Amato has insinuated himself in the gubernatorial sweepstakes by supporting Democrat Andrew Cuomo and Republican Rick Lazio,” observes Herbert London, president of the Hudson Institute and veteran New York conservative activist. “How can you lose when you’ve got a horse in each party? In my judgment, D’Amato is the force that undermines Republican politics in this state, since he has become the kingmaker and powerbroker who stands in the way of genuine reform. As a consequence, we have a Democratic party constrained by its natural constituency and a Republican party paralyzed by its putative leadership.”

Down in Dixie, frustrated Republicans complain about another smooth operator. J. Warren Tompkins is a successful South Carolina lobbyist and campaign operative. Conservatives argue that his good fortune has come at the expense of their beliefs, and that he has enriched himself through insider’s deals and arrangements that subvert limited government.

Palmetto State governor Mark Sanford, a stalwart and increasingly vocal advocate for limited government and fiscal sanity, told Human Events’s John Gizzi that “the bottom line in South Carolina is we absolutely have Republican control, but we do not have a conservative working majority in our body politic. . . . A lot of folks with whom we’ve indeed had troubles have not been pushing conservative ideology.”

Sanford blames “RINOs” [Republicans in Name Only] such as Tompkins’s client, state senate Finance Committee chairman Hugh Leatherman. Sanford described him as “a guy who for 25 years of his life is a Democrat, he sees the time changing, he shifts to the Republican party, but it is indeed in name only.”

Sanford specifically points to Tompkins as a problem. Tompkins, Sanford said, “long ago earned his stripes as a Republican. But Warren Tompkins these days makes his money as a lobbyist with issues before the state general assembly.”

“I don’t think Mr. Tompkins is interested in responding to the governor’s assessment of his political acumen,” Terry Sullivan, a partner in Tompkins’s campaign consultancy, says by phone. “One of our big clients is Sen. Jim DeMint — another RINO, I guess. The governor has his opinion, and he has his opinion.”

School-choice activists consider Tompkins a hurdle to their goals of expanding learning options for parents and children. “Tompkins has been unfriendly to the idea of school choice — absolutely,” says one Palmetto State political insider who requested anonymity. “I don’t know if he personally is against it, or if it’s just the people who pay his bills. In any state GOP primary, the candidate for whom he consults typically is the anti-choice candidate. That would be a very fair statement to make.”

Tompkins’s critics cite his longtime support for such liberal Republicans as former state legislators Bill Cotty and Adam Taylor. “None of them have ever met a spending increase they didn’t like, and all are violently opposed to long overdue, market-based reforms to our state’s last-in-the-nation public school system,” a local online commentator wrote in 2006.

“In the 2006 primary, there were two GOP candidates for state superintendent of education,” explained one well-placed Republican source. “Tompkins’s candidate was Bob Staton. He was decidedly pro-establishment, anti-choice, and he ended up losing to an upstate South Carolina businesswoman named Karen Floyd. She ended up losing in the general election” to Democrat Jim Rex.

Tompkins spearheaded former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s South Carolina campaign. Tompkins took public heat during the GOP presidential primary when a new website began attacking former senator Fred Thompson (R., Tenn.). PhoneyFred.org slammed Thompson as “FancyFred,” “MoronFred,” and “PlayboyFred.” “Once a Pro-Choice Skirt Chaser, Now Standard Bearer of the Religious Right?” the website asked.


The Washington Post’s Michael Shear discovered in September 2007 that the website was registered to “Under the Power Lines.” Records listed its address as 807 Gervais Street, Suite 202, in Columbia, S.C. That is the exact location of Tompkins’s First Tuesday Strategies, then called TTS Consulting. UPL’s then-phone number and its official contact e-mail
both flowed into Tompkins’s office.

The website vanished soon after the Post began asking about it.

Tompkins represented Competitive Insurance Group LLC, formerly the Thomas Brown Agency. Despite its name, CIG enjoyed a lucrative, no-bid government contract for covering state property against wind damage between 1988 and 2007. Governor Sanford and GOP state senator Murrell Smith fought to open the contract to bidding. They succeeded, saving taxpayers at least $2 million annually.

“Speaking personally, as a taxpayer, I was shocked to find that this large contract was being awarded annually without any sort of competitive process,” former Government Accountability Committee chairman Chad Walldorf told Charleston Business Journal’s Dan McCue.

Like D’Amato, Tompkins seems adroit at planting his feet on both sides of controversies and contests. He simultaneously led the 1998 reelection campaign of former GOP governor David Beasley, a video-poker opponent, while lobbying for the state’s video-poker industry, which opened its coffers to beat Beasley. Tompkins’s video-poker client won, as his political client lost the race with just 45 percent of the vote.

The Palmetto Scoop reported that First Tuesday Strategies was on retainer last year with the State Senate Republican Caucus, for which it provided direct mail, Internet design, and strategic service. Meanwhile, Tompkins’s lobbying firm maxed out with a $5,000 donation to the State Senate Democratic Caucus last June. This takes bipartisanship to the level of conflict of interest.

“I don’t know if Warren’s a fallen angel, in that he once believed in the conservative creed, but now the guy does not seem to have a philosophical bone in his body,” laments one leading South Carolina Republican. “He is driven by the almighty dollar. If it swings to the left, he goes to the left. If it swings to the right, he goes to the right. If it swings Democrat, he goes Democrat. That is not the mark of a conservative. And I don’t believe that is the mark of a Republican.”
Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. © 2009 Scripps Howard News Service



TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections; US: New York; US: South Carolina
KEYWORDS: aldamato; damato; rinos; warrentompkins
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1 posted on 02/26/2009 6:35:59 PM PST by neverdem
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To: upchuck

corruption ping


2 posted on 02/26/2009 6:38:34 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: neverdem

the bushes never were “conservatives”.


3 posted on 02/26/2009 6:39:59 PM PST by ken21 (the only thing we have to fear is fdr deja vu.)
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To: neverdem

D’Amato... who moved the rock where he was hiding?


4 posted on 02/26/2009 6:40:30 PM PST by pointsal
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To: pointsal

He seems to have lost his mind.


5 posted on 02/26/2009 6:41:17 PM PST by darkangel82 (I don't have a superiority complex, I'm just better than you.)
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To: neverdem

Nice expose on the campaign-industrial complex in two states.

I hope he does Ohio next.


6 posted on 02/26/2009 6:42:56 PM PST by NeoCaveman (hey who ordered the trillion dollar crap sandwich? FUBO)
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To: neverdem

They don’t call them the “Political Elite” for nothing.


7 posted on 02/26/2009 6:43:45 PM PST by headstamp 2 ("Government is a disease masquerading as it's own cure")
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To: Allegra; CanadianMusherinMI; Clemenza; Diogenesis; ejonesie22; EternalVigilance; Finny; ...

*ping*

Reference about Slick Willard’s thug operative in South Carolina.


8 posted on 02/26/2009 6:47:04 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Hey, come on. Slick is a man of principals. (What one’s you want? Slick’s bought a truck full. Take your pick)


9 posted on 02/26/2009 6:49:03 PM PST by Leisler
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To: neverdem

Yeah, rag on Al D’Amato all you want, he is not a pure conservative, but he WAS chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee when Republicans took back the Senate. He was an effective politician and a champion fund raiser. If only John Cornyn performs as well.


10 posted on 02/26/2009 6:52:52 PM PST by La Lydia
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To: Leisler

Ew, no. I bought two of them awhile back and they gave me the $hits.


11 posted on 02/26/2009 6:57:34 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: cyborg; Clemenza; Cacique; NYCVirago; The Mayor; Darksheare; hellinahandcart; Chode; ...
Poll: Paterson's popularity continues to slide

Poll: James Tedisco Leads in Race for Kirsten Gillibrand's Former Seat

FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.

12 posted on 02/26/2009 6:59:37 PM PST by neverdem (Xin loi minh oi)
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To: neverdem

Crawling from the wreckage is right.

From what I see, there are a few different types of republicans:

1) Free Market/Defense
2) Christian
3) RINOS
4) Hard right (protectionits)
5) Traditional conservatives (like Eisenhower and Nixon)

Of course there is some overlap in various individuals, but these are some of the clear differences I see.

They all seem to crawling out of the wreckage in different directions, pointing fingers, but not quite yet leaving the scene of the catastrophe.

The hard right is blaming the free marketers and capitalists for the financial chaos and what they perceive as net job losses over the last 20 or so years.

Free marketers are blaming the Christians for being too intrusive, the hard right for alienating LEGAL immigrants who otherwise vote republican, and traditional concervatives for not doing anything to remedy anti-competitive economic policies to grow the economy enough to cover their spending, and just spending too much along with the RINOS.

And most of them are blaming RINOs for corrutption and out of control spending.

Well, I think we all need to kiss and make up. United we stand, divided we’ve fallen and can’t get back up. We still have common core values about what the role and responsibilities of government(except for maybe RINOs) that make sense to prioritize at the top of our list. After all, we didn’t fail because there is something wrong with our core values. We failed because they weren’t put into practice by those we elected. That is our fault as voters for not replacing underperforming incumbents.

And sure, we will have to put up with a few things that we can’t all agree upon should we ever get back to where we were before everything got all messed up. From my point of view, however, we will never get there if we can’t unite; and having to put up with some stuff the hard right wants and get most of the other things I want has got to be far and away better than what we are getting right now. Heck, I’d even go back to the way things were 4 years ago than have to go through this.


13 posted on 02/26/2009 7:19:06 PM PST by dajeeps
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Hold on now!

Deroy Murdock supported one of the biggest RINO’s of all time -— Rudy Giuliani!


14 posted on 02/26/2009 7:27:10 PM PST by Reagan Man ("In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.")
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To: Reagan Man

I was more interested in the Tompkins expose.


15 posted on 02/26/2009 7:34:17 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: La Lydia

Al Scum-Auto is worthy of his nickname. To think, he thought that he could win 40% of the Jewish vote against Schumer.


16 posted on 02/26/2009 7:42:28 PM PST by Clemenza (Remember our Korean War Veterans)
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To: neverdem

You know what?

F*** politicians.

The day they decided to make a career out of the position — treating it as a full time pursuit instead of an interlude they were forced to take to serve their country — is the day this country started to go down the tubes.

The only answer is term limits — one or two terms and you get to go back and earn a living under the laws you enacted.

Think about it.


17 posted on 02/26/2009 7:48:24 PM PST by FatherFig1o155 (I love -- and miss -- the republic I grew up in: America.)
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To: neverdem
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Deroy a Rudy butt-boy not too long ago?

Not that he's wrong in this article, though...
18 posted on 02/26/2009 7:52:34 PM PST by Antoninus (License is the ability to do whatever you want. Freedom is the right to do as you ought.)
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To: FatherFig1o155

They also need to have their pensions tied to the value of the stock market instead of a set value forked over by taxpayers regardless of economic conditions. Make good policy, get a good pension. Make bad policy and get screwed along with all of us scrubs.


19 posted on 02/26/2009 7:53:36 PM PST by dajeeps
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To: NeoCaveman
I hope he does Ohio next.

He should do NJ too. Every time we've tried to run a real conservative in this state, we face fierce opposition--from Republicans. Some of them even went and supported disgraced gay American Jim McGreevey rather than vote for a solid conservative like Bret Schundler.
20 posted on 02/26/2009 7:55:03 PM PST by Antoninus (License is the ability to do whatever you want. Freedom is the right to do as you ought.)
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