Paterson Aide Meets With Political Hit Man
Let the 2010 campaign season begin!
By SCOTT ROSS
Updated 8:15 AM EST, Mon, Jun 29, 2009
With his popularity at historic lows and an election on the horizon, Gov. David Paterson sent his top adviser, Charles O'Byrne, to a confab with Roger Stone, the man who has been credited/blamed for bringing down the Eliot Spitzer.
"I won't comment on the details of a private conversation," Stone told The New York Post.
Just days after the meeting of the minds earlier this month, journalists and political insiders began receiving a deluge of e-mails alleging that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had pursued prosecutions to help his father's law practice and that he was involved in a salacious relationship.
"It was definitely not me," said Stone, a political fixer whose storied career reaches back to his teens, when he played a hand in the Watergate scandal. "I've received them, too, and they are very virulent."
O'Byrne has acknowledged discussing the coming election with Stone, but has allegedly told people that the main reason was for the meeting was to enlist the help of the GOP in getting gay marriage legalized.
Stone helping Paterson defeat Cuomo is weirdly logical, in that he has said that the GOP would rather run a gubernatorial candidate against the incumbent than Cuomo.
But O'Byrne reaching out to Stone for help with gay marriage makes much more sense. Stone, who calls himself "a total Republican" not a "Christian-right conservative," knows a thing or two about being ostracized for sexual tastes that run counter the delicate sensibilities that often dictate politics.
In 1996, Stone was forced to remove himself from Bob Dole's presidential campaign after it was discovered that he and his wife had placed ads in a publication called Local Swing Fever that read, in part, “Hot, insatiable lady and her handsome body builder husband, experienced swingers, seek similar couples or exceptional muscular . . . single men.”
But Stone's own personal history didn't stop him from reaching out to the FBI with information about Spitzer's penchant for enlisting the services high-priced call girls.
"The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services. It is Mr. Stone's understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some prearranged transfer," read a letter from Stone's lawyer to the Bureau, according to The Miami Herald.
First Published: Jun 29, 2009 6:41 AM EST
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