Green's staffer/campaign manager on Jack Abramoff's freebies list

Jack Abramoff, by all accounts, is a generous man, especially when the recipient of his generosity is in a position to do him some good. He didn't limit his largesse to elected officials; staff members are key to getting things done in DC. Some of the freebies even trickled down to Rep. Mark Green's chief of staff, Mark Graul.

Abramoff, in case you've been boycotting the news for the past year, is the sleazy lobbyist and good buddy of Tom DeLay, who has been indicted on umpteen charges of corruption. DeLay will probably want to stand next to Abramoff, because DeLay might look good by comparison.

A quick once-over of Abramoff's record, courtesy of a New York Times editorial, which in turn referenced an article by conservative Andrew Ferguson in the Weekly Standard:

[Ferguson] painted the big picture of the Abramoff ethos in vibrant strokes: the ill-gotten Indian gambling moolah snaking through the bank accounts of a network of DeLay cronies and former aides; the "fact-finding" Congressional golfing trips to further the cause of sweatshop garment factories in the Marianas islands; the bogus "think tank" in Rehoboth Beach, Del., where the two scholars in residence were a yoga instructor and a lifeguard (albeit a "lifeguard of the year"). Certain names kept recurring in Mr. Ferguson's epic narrative, most prominently Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, Republican money-changers who are as tightly tied to President Bush and Karl Rove as they are to Mr. Abramoff and Mr. DeLay, if not more so.

When you are used to giving away free first class golfing trips to Scotland for needy Congressmen, tickets to a wrestling exhibition hardly seem worth mentioning to someone like Abramoff, I'm sure. It is a somewhat bigger deal in Wisconsin.

Talking Points Memo reports:

Lawyers, ethics watchdogs, hill staffers and you at home can help with some open-source investigative reporting. As you know, Jack Abramoff rented skyboxes at several DC area sports and entertainment complexes, which he used to dole out favors, goodies and fundraising assistance to Republican members of Congress and their staffs. Recently I've been working my way through records ... which detail which staffers and members got tickets to what events, who they brought with them and so forth.

Now, for instance, here is a roster from Abramoff's assistant Susan Ralston which goes in to who got to go to the "WWF Raw is War" event on October 2nd, 2000.

Mark Graul, then Green's chief of staff and now the manager of his campaign for governor, is on the skybox list for two tickets. The note says is tickets were requested by "Calvert." Two Calverts, Chad and Jennifer, are also on the ticket list. And who are the Calverts:

The Village Voice:

The Washington Post would later do stories about the awesome influence of Jack Abramoff and Mike Scanlon, who combined to drain $45 million in reported lobbying fees from four tribes in the first three Bush years, prompting an ongoing investigation by Senator John McCain. Abramoff's top political allies were House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed.

But no one noticed that Bill Jarrell and Jennifer Calvert, two lobbyists who'd worked with Abramoff prior to 2001, left him within days of the election to form their own company, Washington Strategies, immediately attracting tribal clients. Jarrell, like Scanlon, was once a top DeLay staffer. Smith says Jennifer's husband, Chad Calvert, while he was Interior's deputy director of legislative affairs, introduced her to him, left documents from her in his office, and joined the two of them at lobbying lunches—recollections the Calverts only partially deny. When Chad Calvert was recently promoted, the Interior press release said he'd been "coordinating department legislative policy" for "the assistant secretary for Indian affairs" for three years. Jennifer Calvert's bio says her "lobbying expertise focuses on Native American issues," one of those marvelous coincidences of inside-the-beltway life.

And to think that what they have in common with Mark Green's chief of staff is a love of the World Wrestling Federation.

Back to Talking Points Memo:

So a few questions.

For you Hill folks, how commonplace is this up there -- a lobbyist who routinely gives free tickets to ball games and concerts and even professional wrestling events to staffers from the offices of helpful members of Congress?

Several of the staffers on the roster for the "WWF Raw is War" shindig show up getting skybox tickets again and again just during 2000. A lawyer familiar with the Preston Gates records and the Abramoff skybox operation says there's no sign any of them ever reimbursed or paid for the tickets. So how does that square with Congressional ethics rules? A problem?

Mark Graul and Mark Green both like to talk about "Wisconsin values" in every press release and every utterance from the Green campaign.

But this kind of behavior reflects Washington values, not Wisconsin's. While Graul's candidate tries to get some distance from DeLay while keeping his $29,000 in dirty money, Graul himself has some questions to answer. Was he one of those getting tickets "again and again" in 2000? Did he pay for the tickets? Does he see any ethical problem in that relationship with the Calverts? What did they want from him and Green? Did they get it?

And some questions, while we're at it, for Mark Green, too: Is it his policy that his staffers are free to take freebies from DC lobbyists? If so, what have they taken and from who? Do they have to report it, even to Green? Does he even know what his staffers accept?

Think the news media will ask either Green or Graul? You do? Wanna bet?