A match made in someplace other than heaven. K Street, maybe

The Atlanta Journal Constitution ^ | 02/06/05 | Tom Baxter and Jim Galloway

[Maurice1962]

Enron, meet Jack Abramoff. Jack Abramoff, meet Enron.

One year before the energy firm went belly up, paid adviser Ralph Reed urged Enron officials to hire Abramoff, then a rising Washington lobbyist, as a "kitchen cabinet" consultant.

The e-mailed endorsement resulted in clubby lunches in which Abramoff and Enron reps, future icons of scandal in Washington and on Wall Street, sat across the table from each other.

It's well-known that Reed worked for both Enron and Abramoff. That he helped them cross paths is not. The e-mail has never been published before.

Reed's plug for his old friend serves as further evidence his professional relationship with Abramoff was closer than Reed — a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor — cares to admit.

In a lower-cased e-mail dated Dec. 19, 2000, Reed tapped out: "abramoff is arguably the most influential and effective gop lobbyist in congress. i share several clients with him and have yet to see him lose a battle. he also is very close to [then-House majority leader Tom] Delay and could help enormously on that front."

The message was addressed to Richard Shapiro, Enron's top lobbyist, who met with Abramoff several weeks later, without Reed - according to Shapiro's electronic appointment calendar.

We came across the e-mail, and notations of several lunch dates, among tens of thousands of Enron documents available through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Web site.

At the time of Reed's recommendation, Enron was 12 months from bankruptcy. The trial of former Chairman Ken Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling began last week — the largest corporate fraud case in history.

Abramoff would take four more years to self-destruct. He pleaded guilty last month to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. No details of the Abramoff-Enron meetings could be found in the FERC archives. To Reed's knowledge, Enron and Abramoff never formalized a relationship, a campaign spokesman said.

But the search of documents turned up a trio of memos Reed wrote to Enron officials in 2000 and 2001, primarily advising them on establishing a Washington lobbying team — and a "kitchen cabinet" advisory panel of political notables. Reed mentioned Abramoff's outfit in an August 2000 memo addressed to Shapiro and Steve Kean, Lay's chief of staff.

Reed suggested Enron supplement its in-house lobbying efforts aimed at Congress: "My recommendation is to think in terms of one or two [Washington] firms with strength in whatever chamber you are weakest. If the head of the D.C. office is close to Senate leadership, one of the firms with strong ties to DeLay is Preston Gates."

Four months later, Abramoff left Preston Gates for the firm of Greenberg Traurig. Reed's December recommendation to Enron, under the subject line "abramoff," reflected that shift.

On Friday, Reed campaign manager Jared Thomas disputed Reed's own 5-year-old note of "shared" clients with Abramoff. Thomas said Reed was a Greenberg Traurig contractor — which assured he wasn't being paid with gambling money.

Reed had substantial histories with both Enron and Abramoff.

Reed left his position as executive director of the Christian Coalition in 1997 to form a private grassroots firm, Century Strategies, in Duluth. Enron was one of Reed's first clients. By the time the company collapsed, it had paid him more than $300,000.

Reed's history with Abramoff dates back to their days as College Republicans. Shortly after he went into private business for himself, Reed sought Abramoff's help in developing a list of corporate clients.

In 1999 and 2000, Reed defeated an Alabama lottery referendum and video poker initiatives on behalf of Mississippi Choctaws, an Abramoff client out to protect casino operations. Reed had just started an anti-gambling campaign in Texas, funded with casino money from another Abramoff client, the Louisiana Coushatta tribe.

In the August 2000 memo to Enron, Reed stressed the importance of intimate contacts in Washington "for the purposes of intelligence."

He provided an example: "We recently worked on the grassroots side of a legislative issue that had been reported out of committee and was awaiting floor action. The client desired that the bill not come to a vote. Contacts in leadership offices assured us that while the bill would get its vote, they would not fight for it. This was critical information to our grassroots strategy."

Reed denied any connection, but one month earlier, he'd helped, paired with Abramoff, to defeat a congressional ban on Internet gaming. Their effort was financed by eLottery Inc., a Connecticut-based company eager to sell state lottery tickets on-line. The gambling ban failed on a floor vote in the U.S. House.

Reed has said that he didn't know "the specific client" funding his operation, and that he opposed the measure because of loopholes that would have condoned Internet gambling for horse and dog tracks.

Federal prosecutors are now looking looking at circumstances leading up to the vote. According to court papers, Abramoff and his clients allegedly provided $50,000 to the wife of Delay's chief of staff, Tony Rudy, to encourage Rudy's help in killing the anti-gaming bill and other legislation.

Rudy was identified as "Staffer A" in the plea agreement Abramoff signed last month.

We can presume that he has no re-election strategy, and will only ask for money once

Republican state Rep. Chuck Scheid of Woodstock announced at a Cherokee County GOP meeting Saturday that he's running for labor commissioner — primarily, he says, because he wants to abolish the state Labor Department.

"If you're looking for ways to downsize government, I think this is an excellent department to start with," Scheid said last week.

He said the state should explore ways for Georgians to find jobs through the Web and other means.

"Let me make sure I have this right — his platform is to eliminate the Labor Department, and he's running for labor commissioner?" queried Michael Thurmond, who now holds the job.

Thurmond said the department is busy dealing with the Ford and GM plant closings, and he would have no further comment.

But he did acknowledge that he's staying home to run for the same office again, which puts rumors to the contrary momentarily to rest.

The congresswoman of the Lower Ninth Ward diaspora presides over troubled water

U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney's town hall meeting Saturday on the Hurricane Katrina relief effort was supposed to last a couple of hours. It's a sign of the continuing frustration of New Orleans evacuees that it went on more than three, and that there were people lined up to talk when the session ended.

McKinney sits on the House committee investigating the government's response to Katrina and has been a sharp critic of the Bush administration's performance. At the weekend session on the Clarkston campus of Georgia Perimeter College, she took part in an often bruising dialogue with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

McKinney told FEMA human services branch chief Mark Askey she was "astounded" he didn't know about a commitment she said FEMA acting director David Paulson gave the Congressional Black Caucus that no Katrina evacuees would be turned out of hotels.

The cultural friction that marked the onset of this great national disaster isn't anywhere near dying down.

One evacuee after another rose to complain about dealing on the phone with unhelpful government personnel.

"They're rude, they're impolite, they hang up the phone," one evacuee said.

Askey said he heard very much the same thing when he talked with the government employees on the other side of the line.

"They're people. They get frustrated just like you get frustrated," Askey said.

Nice legs: But as Cathy Cox might argue, pantyhose shouldn't disqualify a candidate for governor

Those naughty Democrats.

In 2002, the cash-strapped, underdog campaign of Sonny Perdue put a video on the Internet — it couldn't afford a TV ad — that depicted then-incumbent Gov. Roy Barnes as a giant rat with a crown and a bit of bling.

Ever since, we've wondered what the payback would look like: Perdue as a Kafka-like cockroach? A possum?

Now we know. Democrats have put the Republican governor in a blue flame and tights, and dubbed him "the Gas Guy." Here's the Webweb site: www.governorgasguy.com. So far, Dems have received no cease-and-desist order from Georgia Natural Gas, which has an eerily similar mascot.

The purpose of the Web site is to give voters a winter-time reminder of Perdue's pivotal role in the 1997 deregulation of natural gas — the implementation of which, Perdue himself later said, was "bungled."

This a fine topic for Democrats to hammer on, if they can get past the fact that deregulation rolled through a Democratic-controlled Legislature without a single dissenting vote. Perdue, of course, would switch to the Republican party the next year.

This just in: Washington crosses Delaware, eyes Hessian strudel in Trenton

For a few minutes, flaggers throughout Georgia were delirious with joy.

Last Wednesday afternoon, CNN's Wolf Blitzer stunned listeners with the news that our Legislature had re-opened the sore of all sores — the fight over Confederate symbolism and the state flag.

"In Georgia," Blitzer intoned," "There's yet another push to change the state flag. The state Senate yesterday approved a new flag resembling the banner of the Confederacy."

In the distance, a howl of laughter pierced the air. Some said it sounded like Roy Barnes. We were unable to confirm this.

An hour later, Blitzer closed his program with a correction. "The state Legislature has taken no such action," he said. "When we screw up, we're going to apologize."

How'd they get it so wrong? They picked it up from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. From a history column that noted the Feb. 2 doings of the 1956 session Legislature.

[OldFriend]

Any mention of the letters Teresa Heinz wrote in support of Ken Lay AFTER it had been public knowledge that Enron had misrepresented it's fiscal stability.