Official who gave ‘troubling’ testimony on McAuliffe now fundraising for him
By: William C. Flook
Examiner Staff Writer
May 11, 2009
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| Terry McAuliffe, pictured, is receiving campaign support from Richard Sullivan, a former Democratic official who testified the candidate tried to arrange an illicit fundraising swap . (AP) |
A former Democratic Party official who a decade ago described in a federal criminal trial an illicit fundraising swap he said Terry McAuliffe tried to arrange with the Teamsters Union is now raising money for McAuliffe’s campaign.
Richard Sullivan, the Democratic National Committee’s former finance director, was a witness in the 1999 trial of a top union official under Teamsters President Ron Carey, the result of a broader investigation into the funneling of union money into Carey’s re-election campaign.
During the trial, Sullivan testified that McAuliffe — then President Bill Clinton’s head of fundraising — repeatedly pushed a plan in which a Democratic donor would bankroll the union chief’s struggling campaign in exchange for the promise of a much larger gift from the Teamsters to Democratic campaign committees.
Ten years later, Sullivan has emerged as a fundraiser for McAuliffe. Now a lobbyist, he co-hosted an April 30 fundraiser on behalf of the gubernatorial candidate in Raleigh, N.C., according to a copy of an invitation obtained by The Examiner.
Though a donor never materialized for that plan, and McAuliffe was never charged, his role in the Teamsters saga remains one of the most controversial chapters in his political career. A New York Times editorial in 1999 called Sullivan’s account of McAuliffe’s role in the scheme “troubling.”
Sullivan testified that McAuliffe, at a meeting of Democratic committee staffers, “said that if we could get a $50,000 contribution for the Carey campaign he knew we would get $500,000 for [the campaign committees] from the Teamsters.”
Federal law prohibits the use of union funds to promote a candidate for union office. The scandal lead to Carey’s ouster and to the conviction of some of his associates, who helped siphon more than $800,000 in Teamsters’ funds as part of the scheme.
Whether McAuliffe’s role in the labyrinthine union fundraising swap will matter to Virginia voters is uncertain. His opponents in the June 9 Democratic primary — state Sen. Creigh Deeds and former Del. Brian Moran — have yet to raise it as an issue. Neither has former Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell, the presumptive Republican gubernatorial nominee.
“The more complicated something is, the harder it is to make it a campaign issue,” said George Mason University political science professor Stephen Farnsworth. “And this is on the pretty complicated end.”
McAuliffe’s campaign would not comment for this story. Sullivan did not return a call for comment.
