Reply #33: A bit more on why Native Americans might be supporting Democrats

[MrBenchley]

"WASHINGTON -- A Washington lobbyist and a close associate played a secret role in helping elect tribal council members of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, who later voted to pay them about $10 million for consulting work, the tribe’s chairman, Richard Milanovich, told a Senate hearing Wednesday.
The Palm Springs tribe hired lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, a political consultant who worked with Abramoff, to work on issues involving its gambling agreement with the state, Milanovich told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
The testimony was part of a Senate investigation into an alleged $66 million paid by newly rich gaming tribes to the two political operatives, who are said to have overbilled by 5,900 percent for voter lists and pressed tribes to pay for skyboxes at the Washington Redskins’ stadium.
Abramoff, a large donor to President Bush who is involved in several Republican groups, appeared before the committee but refused to answer any questions. He cited his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions that would incriminate him.
Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was not present and U.S. Marshals were seeking to serve him a subpoena, said Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., the committee’s chairman.
Bernie Sprague, a Saginaw Chippewa council member, said Abramoff and Scanlon also helped elect a majority of the Saginaw Chippewa’s tribal council. After that, the Mount Pleasant, Mich.-based tribe paid more than $14 million to the pair, including $4.5 million for a Michigan voter database that could have been bought for $75,000, Sprague said.
Milanovich and senators also were troubled by e-mail between Scanlon and Abramoff that described their Indian clients as "monkeys," "morons" and "troglodytes."
"While there are a number of specifics that your investigation is revealing," Milanovich told the committee, "perhaps the saddest is the utterly callous fashion in which they mocked the interests of the clients they were actually hired to represent and displayed a willingness to engage in virtually any conduct so long as they could make money." "

http://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories2004/local/20040930004411.shtml

Say, wonder how Abramoff and Scanlon (assumingh they nab him) feel about gun rights? Wish we could ask their good pal and NRA board member Grover Norquist:

""We take care of our own," said one Reagan-era operative who began as a College Republican in the 1970s and now works as a lobbyist and adviser to corporations and entrepreneurs. "If you do your work in the trenches, then you get the chance to take care of yourself."
The College Republican group is an integral part of the GOP network, having served as an entry point and networking vantage for several generations of lobbyists and operatives. Among those who served as chairman or executive director were Atwater; Rove; Grover Norquist, an influential conservative activist in Washington; Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist at the law firm Greenberg Traurig; and Ralph Reed, who ran the Christian Coalition at the height of its prowess and now is a top southern consultant. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11277-2004Jan12?language=printer