Republican Bill Simon Jr. sought to bolster his campaign to oust Gov. Gray Davis on Monday with newly unsealed court records showing that a convicted racketeer tried in 1993 and 1994 to implicate Davis in improper campaign fund-raising.
Prosecutors found no evidence of a crime when they reviewed the matter, concluding at the time that Davis’ accuser, Mark L. Nathanson, lacked credibility. A Davis spokesman called the accusations “totally false.”
But a federal judge’s release of the records just eight days before Davis is up for reelection turned the felon’s accusations into a central focus of the governor’s race.
Within hours, Simon sought to publicize them at a news conference on the beach in Malibu. He demanded that Davis answer detailed questions about the unsubstantiated charges by Nathanson, a former state coastal commissioner convicted in a corruption scandal.
“The citizens of California deserve to know whether these allegations can be corroborated,” Simon said.
Nathanson went to prison in 1993 for extorting payments from Hollywood celebrities and others seeking permits to build on the Southern California coast.
Seeking to reduce his sentence, Nathanson told prosecutors that Davis asked him for the names of people he had helped in coastal business so that Davis could solicit campaign money from them.
After interviewing Nathanson extensively, the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento did not pursue his allegations.
In a July 2000 court filing, prosecutors explained their rationale. Nathanson, they said, “lied during debriefings, withheld information, described conduct which was not illegal and/or provided information which could not be corroborated.”
Simon, a former federal prosecutor, made a passing reference Monday to doubts about Nathanson’s credibility. “Yes, of course we need to consider the source,” he said. “But one should also consider the well-documented record of Davis’ pay-to-play politics.”
Davis campaign spokesman Roger Salazar called the accusations “baseless charges that the FBI, the U.S. attorney and a district court judge found to be not credible.”
“The FBI and the U.S. attorney both branded the accuser as a liar,” he said.
Salazar recalled that Simon made a false claim earlier this month that Davis had illegally accepted campaign money in a state building. Simon first said a photograph provided proof, but later admitted that it actually showed Davis in a private home.
“Just like the reckless charge that Bill Simon made three weeks, ago, these accusations are totally false,” Salazar said.
He declined to answer Simon’s specific questions on Nathanson’s accusations, saying Davis “will not get into a tit-for-tat response with a convicted felon and admitted perjurer.”
The governor’s concern about potential political damage was underscored last week by his campaign’s threat to sue TV stations that air any Simon ad that includes Nathanson’s allegations. Simon refused to say Monday whether he would use them in a TV ad.
But Davis moved quickly to inoculate himself against damage anyway by releasing a new spot of his own. It quotes newspapers saying Simon’s earlier allegation against the governor was “a colossal blunder,” a “false accusation” and an “unforgivable act of foolishness.”
“Can we trust anything Bill Simon says?” a narrator asks.
Nathanson was one of 14 legislators, lobbyists and others convicted in a state Capitol corruption scandal that broke in 1988, one of the biggest in California history.
At the time, Nathanson was a Beverly Hills real estate agent known as the coastal commissioner to the stars. He pleaded guilty in 1993 to federal charges of racketeering and filing a false tax return.
His allegations against Davis appeared in 1993 and 1994 letters from his lawyers to federal prosecutors. In an effort to reduce his prison sentence of four years and nine months, he tried to implicate Davis, then state controller.
The documents on Nathanson’s allegations were released by U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton after a two-year legal battle by the Sacramento Bee to force disclosure.
The judge had sealed them earlier, contending that they besmirched Davis and others. But after the Sacramento Bee sued, Karlton released redacted versions of the letters omitting the names of Davis and others.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the newspaper. But a Los Angeles developer named in the documents, Jerome Snyder, pursued the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court rejected his plea earlier this month, leading Karlton to unseal the documents Monday.
“Mark Nathanson’s allegations were nothing more than the desperate lies of a convicted felon hoping to shorten his jail sentence,” Snyder said.
Twice during the legal fight, lawyers for Davis intervened and argued that release of the information would damage the governor’s reputation.
Davis attorney Joseph Remcho said he sent a letter to Karlton in March 2001, and late last year filed a brief before the appeals court.
Nathanson also tried to block the documents’ release.
Nathanson declined to discuss the matter, saying: “I’m not making any comments, but thank you anyway.”
Former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown appointed Nathanson to the Coastal Commission.
According to the letters, the former coastal commissioner and Davis had a “long relationship” dating to the governor’s days as chief of staff to former Gov. Jerry Brown. Nathanson helped raise money for many politicians, Davis among them.
“Davis would obtain from Nathanson the details regarding what Nathanson had done for the person [seeking a coastal permit],” a 1994 Nathanson letter says. “Davis would thereafter contact the person and seek to obtain a campaign contribution.”
Davis also sought the names of people Nathanson helped, and “using Nathanson’s name, Davis would try to obtain contributions,” it says.
One of the letters alleges that as a “quid pro quo,” Nathanson asked that Controller Davis appoint Nathanson’s father as inheritance tax appraiser. Nathanson’s father failed the test to become an appraiser, and did not pursue the appointment.