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Vogel's camp offers her side in Pa. election

Posted in on 10/02/07

Vogel’s camp offers her side in Pa. election

Dealing with issue groups, candidate said to have just been doing her job

By Garren Shipley — Daily Staff Writer

Democrats say it smacks of hardball politics.

A spokesman for Republican Senate candidate Jill Holtzman Vogel, however, says her dealings with two issue groups from the 2006 election cycle were just part of her job — making sure her clients comply with state and federal election laws.

Holtzman Vogel, a Warrenton attorney and former chief counsel to the Re-publican National Committee, was simply serving her clients when she worked with the Progressive Policy Council and the American Center for Voting rights, her spokesman said. Holtzman Vogel is the Republican nominee in the 27th District Senate race.

The story of the Progressive Policy Council starts in 2006, when the electoral forecast for Republicans was bleak. The GOP’s thin margin in the U.S. Sen-ate looked perilous, as did a much more solid majority in the House of Representatives.

That’s when mailers from the group started appearing in mailboxes around Pennsylvania, warning liberal voters that the Keystone State’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, Bob Casey, was no different than Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum on a number of social issues like same-sex marriage.

The mailers stated the council was a “not-for-profit organization seeking to educate the public and advocate for progressive public policy solutions for contemporary social issues.”

The Progressive Policy Council’s mailer doesn’t make much political sense for a liberal group, according to Craig Brians, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech. “That’s weird politics,” he said.

That’s not the only thing amiss. According to IRS records, there is no such nonprofit agency.

But the mailers do start to make sense if the intent is to discourage liberal voters from coming to the polls — a theory Democratic groups in Pennsylvania embraced not long after the fliers started showing up in mailboxes.

People behind the flier apparently wanted to remain incognito. The Web site listed on the flier, www.progressivepolicycouncil.org, remains a place holder page to this day.

The domain was registered through Domain Discreet, a Canadian company that lets Web site holders keep otherwise public information about who owns and operates the site a secret. The only other address on file for the group is a post office box in Arlington, and the group contracted with a Pennsylvania company to handle the actual printing and mailing.

It turns out that the group did have a strong GOP connection. The group’s director was Michael P. Devanney, of Wexford, Pa. — a former executive director of the Allegheny County, Pa., Republican Party and paid adviser to 2006 Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Bill Scranton, according to documents on file with the Pennsylvania Secretary of State’s Office.

In 2004, Devanney was elected GOP committeeman in Allegheny County. He also donated $250 to the re-election campaign of President Bush.

Records on file with the State Corporation Commission show that no fewer than three attorneys with Holtzman Vogel Law filed the documents creating the corporation in 2006 — and the paperwork dissolving it in August.

That’s not surprising at all, said Tommy Hopper, a spokesman for the campaign. Holtzman Vogel’s law practice deals with election and campaign finance law, and she’s good at it.

“She helps people abide by the law,” Hopper said.

“It’s not political. It’s not strategic, it’s not about message or tactics. Jill represents dozens of interest groups, political candidates, charities, nonprofits,” he said. “She’s representing a client.

“If I were going to set up a national or a statewide group to do anything, I would call Jill and ask, ‘Can you do this for me?’ It’s like any other law firm in America, except it’s a more high-profile business.”

In regard to the Progressive Policy Council, Holtzman Vogel “never saw the mail,” Hopper said. “She was astonished that that was the subject matter.”

Devanney declined to comment without first speaking with other members of the group.

The entire incident should serve as a warning to voters, according to the campaign of Karen Schultz, Holtzman Vogel’s Democratic opponent.

“This illustrates that Jill is a key part of dirty insider Washington, D.C., politics and that she wants to bring this to our part of Virginia,” said Julie Petrick, Schultz’s campaign manager. “Our community needs a leader with real Virginia values who will put problem solving over politics.”

The Progressive Policy Council isn’t the only disappearing group that has strong connections to Holtzman Vogel.

The 2004 presidential election wasn’t as close as the one in 2000, but claims of fraud abounded in both Republican and Democratic camps. Not long after Inauguration Day, the American Center for Voting Rights appeared on the scene.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank was established for the “advancement and protection of the constitutional right of all citizens to participate in the electoral process.”

ACVR got off to a fast start. Just a few days after its March 2005 incorporation was granted by the State Corporation Commission, Executive Director Mark F. “Thor” Hearne was asked to testify before a congressional hearing on alleged voter fraud in Ohio.

The group also submitted a 30-page report, detailing what it said was evidence of massive voter fraud in the state whose electoral votes decided whether George W. Bush or Sen. John F. Kerry would win the 2004 presidential election.

Business interests of Holtzman Vogel and her husband Alex Vogel’s firm were two of the five highest-paid contractors for group, according to its 2005 tax return.

Holtzman Vogel Law did more than $72,000 in legal work for the firm, while the lobby shop of Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti was paid $75,000 to provide an executive director for the operation, according to IRS documents.

In February 2006, Jason Torchinksy — now a senior associate with Holtzman Vogel Law — and ACVR Executive Director Robin DeJarnette testified before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission about voter fraud.

DeJarnette is also the executive director of the Virginia Conservative Action PAC, of which Holtzman Vogel is a former member of the board of directors. That group was the first to publish the fact that Holtzman Vogel’s opponent in the 27th District GOP primary, Mark Tate, was under “intense criminal investigation.” Holtzman Vogel defeated Tate in the June primary, just three weeks after Tate was indicted by a Loudoun County Circuit Court grand jury on nine counts of perjury and two counts of election fraud.

Tens of thousands of dollars have flowed back and forth between Holtzman Vogel and the PAC, including a $50,000 donation from board member David Rensin during the last reporting cycle.

But in May, just weeks after the Election Assistance Commission issued a report that said it was unable to conclude whether widespread, systematic voter fraud took place, something happened and ACVR disappeared. All traces of its Web site disappeared, and its state charter was dissolved.

ACVR was simply an effort to call attention to a serious problem that could have a major impact on the democratic process, Hopper said.

“People are a little shocked in this day and age to find out that voter fraud still goes on,” Hopper said. “I think since Florida [and the 2000 presidential election debacle] that maybe people are a little more aware of it than they were a few years ago.”

Regardless, Holtzman Vogel’s connection to the group was minimal, Hopper said.

“In the case of ACVR, it was tax work,” he said. “That was all.”

“In Virginia there are hundreds of illegal aliens registered to vote,” he said. “When you allow people to vote who shouldn’t be allowed to vote … that’s the same as stealing a vote from somebody who is legally entitled to vote.”

Election Day is Nov. 6.

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