Burnt Orange Report

The Story on Draft John Sharp

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

I haven’t been ignoring the launch of www.draftjohnsharp.com, I've been poking around the web gathering information in order to write this overly comprehensive post. Bear with me, it's long, but it's probably the biggest indication of what is about to come in the Texas Governor's Race.

I'm going to start out with a bit of an off the wall claim but I'll try to provide evidence to back it up. Gardner Selby ran 'from the lege' blog post today that is listed on the DraftJohnSharp site claiming that John Sharp "hasn't had the guts to look at it yet" and that the site was created by a Charles Whitaker of Dallas.

One, Sharp's statement makes it seem like he's very aware of this project that some random person who worked for the Comptroller of Publican Accounts for 5 years in the mid-90s happened to come up with. Two, I don't believe there is a Charles Whitaker of Dallas or at least, he didn't make the site at all. I believe it is the very same Austin consulting group that Greg thinks it is when he first scratched the surface of this story. So that is where I will begin...

First, some primers. Thanks to Greg, we already know that the domain is privately registered through GKG.net which does that as part of its business. But this isn’t' the dead end that Greg originally thought. Remember GKG.net...

Then Greg ganders at the source code (and though I did this I must have overlooked it) and finds that there is some old forgotten lines in there that prove that some of the template once was from the Lee Leffingwell campaign site in his run for Austin City Council this spring. Who consulted for the Leffinwell campaign this spring (as well as Dunkerly)?

Mark Nathan, who is part of the consulting firm of Archer Nathan, which is the brain trust from Will Wynn's successful campaign to become Mayor of Austin. (Christian Archer was State House Candidate Kelly White's deputy campaign manager and the group did her field program.)

Now, back in January, Vince Leibowitz reported on an SD 2 Summit that Christian Archer presented at, and mentioned that Archer Nathan Consulting was one of the key groups behind the TakeBackTexas.org website which sent out third party mailers in the 2004 House races.

Now, that website is under construction again, but if you look at the Whois data for the domain, it's of course publicly owned by Mark Nathan but more interestingly, the sponsoring registrar and some e-mail addresses point to none other than GKG.net! The exact same GKG.net e-mails can be found on the keepbetty.com whois info. And as someone who owns multiple domains, I can say that one usually keep with the same registrar over time.

But Charles Whitaker of Dallas made the Draft site right? Well, why would he have Lee Leffingwell meta tags in the source code? Want more proof? Compare the CSS style sheets of the current Draft site to those that I pulled from the way back machine which logged the stylesheet for the original Take Back Texas site that we know was owned by Mark Nathan. Oddly identical, minus a couple of colors and fonts. The same order, the same classes, the same blocks. Not only this, but the source code for the archived Take Back Texas site makes the same reference as the Draft site to needing to refer to the style sheet twice, which isn't the most common, and has many of the exact same inline markings as the Draft Site.

So unless this otherwise non Google Searchable noteworthy Charles Whitaker of Dallas happened to have worked with Mark Nathan on that site in 2004 and had all the code and design, I'm calling BS to that source and saying it was Archer Nathan Consulting who did the Draft site.

If someone was trying to conceal the owner of the Draft Sharp site because it would create some business or consulting conflict that you want the media to avoid picking up on, then I'd expect that from tech savvy people who know this business. Some random grassroots supporter with only good intentions wouldn't go through this much trouble. Which leads me to believe this is a trial balloon by the Sharp campaign and friends to gauge support and start moving towards an announcement.

Ok, that gets us to the likely fact that Archer Nathan is the consulting group behind the DraftJohnSharp site. But we aren't finished. A comment exchange left on one of Greg's posts says...

Greg, I received an e-mail from Save Texas Reps to "Draft John Sharp." I thought Save Texas Reps was a site that stands up for real Democrats and not those who sell out to Republicans. As someone who refused to participate in the so-called Dream Ticket in 2002, of which John Sharp was chief architect, I am disturbed and offended that Save Texas Reps is siding against Chris Bell, someone who has never pandered to Republicans or George Bush. Republican LITE will never win us elections. I don't understand why the likes of John Sharp and his loyalists continue to believe that it will. John Sharp is Republican Lite. It's that simple.

Posted by: Marie on August 8, 2005 03:12 PM

SaveTexasReps isn't endorsing Sharp or Bell for Governor. Alfred Stanley is a long-time supporter of SaveTexasReps (a co-founder in fact) and he asked us to send that email. Kelly Fero, Sharp's longtime advisor, has also been a huge contributor to SaveTexasReps over the years (giving labor, not $$) so sending an email to the list supporting Sharp was just paying some dues to old friends and good Democrats.

Posted by: Texas Nate on August 8, 2005 03:34 PM

Now I got the same e-mail, which was quite curious to me at first, because it didn't come in the usual formatted e-mail I get from Save Texas Reps. The text as follows...

From: Alfred@yahoo.com
Subject: Draft John Sharp
Date: August 8, 2005

John Sharp has proven he can make Texas government work better for all of us...

Rick Perry has proven he can't make government work at all...

Please forward to all your friends urging them to visit this web site and urge John Sharp to run for Governor!

Alfred Stanley

http://www.draftjohnsharp.com/

Now who is Alfred Stanley would be the next question right? A political fundraiser, of Alfred Stanley & Associates, he was the landlord for the Texas Democratic Party Headquarters both in its former and current location (and if I remember correctly, Stanley is now in the old HQ location). Andrew told us that in this older BOR post about Soechting spending a large grant of money to the TDP on elections instead of a permanent HQ, a logical choice at the time in his opinion.

(Stanley consulted and fundraised for former City Councilwoman Jackie Goodman and more recently Greg Hamilton for Sheriff and Ron Davis for County Commissioner.)

Stanley was a co-founder of SaveTexasReps. The owner of that site, who left the comment on Greg's site, also owns Mercury Campaigns, which did the TDP's website and was involved in the Dean for Texas effort. Stanley was also a donor to the Dean campaign to the tune of $500-$1000 dollars. But more importantly is that most of Mercury Campaign's work started with the Tony Sanchez campaign where they did the state Internet and E-mail operations. The same Tony Sanchez campaign which Mark Nathan ran statewide field for after leaving his job as an aide to Mayor Will Wynn whom he had helped get elected, which brings us full circle.

IN SHORT...

It seems to be very convenient that at the same time a random Draft John Sharp site with 'private' registration pops up, an e-mail gets sent out to the Save Texas Reps list in a non standard format promoting the Draft site, by one of Austin's premier fundraisers. This comes just days after a big story in which the TDP Chairman makes noise supporting a contested primary, which was confirmed to me in half hour telephone conversation I had with Mr. Soechting last Friday.

In this conversation I understood in so many words that John Sharp was planning to enter the race and that the chair wasn't particularly worried how the Bell or Alvarado campaigns would react. There was a belief the party would benefit from a contest, drawing out voters, battle testing the eventual nominee, and making the nominee earn the nomination in light of a $15 million dollar media affair for Republicans which would kill the party if we had another quiet nomination as in 2002.

So what could we have soon? A party blessed primary contest, with Archer Nathan and Kerry Fero doing consulting, Alfred Stanley as fundraiser, and maybe Mercury Campaigns pitching in some tech work?

Maybe, maybe not. But if so, that's your Burnt Orange Report for the day. I'll continue to delve into it and make some phone calls to tie up ends. Greg has already started looking into it more with some slight of hand noticed in the Draft Comments sections.