Dissecting an Error-Laden Post: Brayton v. Brayton
Here are the "minor points" Brayton says I got wrong: It does not appear that any mailing list was bought at all; rather, a contract was given to Duke's company to make phone calls on their behalf. And the $82,500 figure that Blumenthal uses was not any fee paid to Duke but was the figure that the FEC said would be the usual fine for the violation of FEC regulations in the case (though they settled for only $3000). Brayton is confused on the first point. Perkins cut checks to Duke's Impact Mail for his phone banking list, not as a fee for them to "make phone calls." Perkins bought the list so the senatorial campaign of Woody Jenkins, which he was managing at the time, could make "robo-calls" to reliably conservative voters urging them to get to the polls. Impact Mail sold its list to other campaigns (causing great scandals in the process), but it never made phone calls on any campaign's behalf.
Brayton's second point, that "the $82,500 figure that Blumenthal uses was not any fee paid to Duke but was the figure that the FEC said would be the usual fine for the violation of FEC regulations," is completely wrong. Brayton appears to have misread the FEC filing against Jenkins and Perkins that he cites in his own post. Contrary to Brayton's assertion, Perkins indeed paid $82,500 to Duke's Impact mail (through a third-party surrogate to cover his tracks). He did so in a series of three checks. The proof is in section 6 of the 1999 conciliation agreement between the Jenkins campaign and the Federal Election Commission, which was signed by Woody Jenkins: After the 1996 primary election in Louisiana, David Duke contacted Woody Jenkins and recommended that he use the services of a computerized phone bank system run by Impact Mail. Jenkins purchased several rounds of calls from Impact Mail. After the first round of calls, Jenkins began hearing complaints that Duke's name would appear on the caller ID when a phone bank message would arrive. At that point, Jenkins tried to cancel the transaction but was unable to because Tony Perkins, his campaign manager, had signed a contract with Impact Mail. Subsequently, Jenkins instructed Perkins to put a stop payment on the check issued to Impact Mail and directed that Impact Mail be paid through Courtney Communications, the campaign's media finn. The Jenkins Committee issued three 27,500 checks to Courtney. Courtney, in turn, made out three checks in the same amount to Impact Mail. Brayton goes on to write that "Perkins' response is inaccurate on the big things," essentially agreeing with the main thrust of my argument -- that Perkins knew all along that he was dealing with Duke.
Perkins has denied knowingly paying Duke before. When Perkins pleaded ignorance about his KKK connection during his hapless attempt to unseat Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu in 2002, he was promptly slapped down by the Baton Rouge Advocate. In a scathing July 29, 2002 editorial, the Advocate wrote: No one emerges with credit from association with David Duke. Astonishingly, some of Louisiana's leading politicians were in bed with the former Imperial Wizard. Brayton goes on to say that "none of [Perkins' connections to Duke] proves that Perkins is a racist, of course." Of course? Even after the humiliation that Perkins earned from his association with the KKK's most famous former member, Perkins headlined a fundraiser for the Lousiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The CofCC is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "a hate group that routinely denigrated blacks as 'genetically inferior,' complained about 'Jewish power brokers,' called homosexuals 'perverted sodomites,' accused immigrants of turning America into a 'slimy brown mass of glop,' and named Lester Maddox, the baseball bat-wielding, arch-segregationist former governor of Georgia, 'Patriot of the Century.' I noted Perkins' appearance at the Louisiana CofCC fundraiser and am puzzled at Brayton's omission of this important detail. Is Perkins a racist? The burden of proof should be on him, not on the bloggers of Talk2Action.
Dissecting an Error-Laden Post: Brayton v. Brayton | 26 comments (26 topical, 0 hidden)
Dissecting an Error-Laden Post: Brayton v. Brayton | 26 comments (26 topical, 0 hidden)
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