WHO IS CHRIS LYON?

'Darth Vader' returns to pull more dirty tricks
By Jon Whiten

Last week, the New York Times’ Jim Dwyer revealed that he had been contacted by Chris Lyon, who was doing research for a film on Bob Menendez’s possible involvement in a “massive illegal kickback scheme” in Union City in the late 70s and early 80s.

On June 25, the Times reported that Lyon claimed the film was unconnected to the Kean campaign, and that he didn’t know who was financially backing the film.

Turns out the Kean campaign is behind the film, as revealed five days later in the pages of the Times. Lyon was technically correct when he told the Times that “I was not working for Kean on the documentary project,” because he was working for Matt Leonardo, Kean’s chief campaign consultant. Since he was a subcontractor, he wasn’t working directly for Kean.

However, to claim he didn’t know where the money for the film was coming from is disingenuous at best, as the National Journal reported (4/7/06) that Alfano-Leonardo Communications Inc., the firm that Leonardo co-founded, “is working with GOP Senate candidates Tom Kean in New Jersey and Mike McGavick in Washington.”

But Lyon’s ability to work in the shadows is clear by briefly examining his history, which shows a pattern of dirty campaign tricks and evading responsibility for them.

The earliest example City Belt could find of Lyon’s checkered campaign past was in 1999, when Lyon was the New York State GOP’s head of opposition research.

Lyon was working for Rick Lazio as he battled Rudy Giuliani in a Republican primary for U.S. Senate. A letter postmarked from Albany went out to influential state GOP officials, claiming that Giuliani was plotting “to take over the New York GOP” by running for the Senate seat.

As the New York Post (6/21/99) reported, “influential Republicans told [us] the anonymous letter was written by Christopher Lyons…one GOP official even claimed Lyons recently ‘bragged’ about authoring the letter.’”

Lyon, who had previously helped Giuliani become mayor of New York City in 1993, denied involvement with the letter, although some insiders told the Post that Lyons had “expected a lucrative full-time job with the mayor,” and was upset he never got it after Giuliani took office.

But the most clear-cut example of Lyon’s muddy past came later, in the 2000 Republican gubernatorial primary in New Hampshire. Lyon was working for Jeffrey R. Howard, who now is a federal judge on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, thanks to a Sept. 4, 2001 nomination from George W. Bush.

New Hampshire Attorney General Philip McLaughlin chastised Lyons and fellow consultant James Martin for “orchestrating anonymous fliers and automated phone calls on behalf of Howard … that maligned eventual GOP nominee Gordon Humphrey and his wife.” (Roll Call, 8/2/01)

These mailings included one sent out in the last week of the campaign that listed the top ten reasons to vote against Humphrey. Number ten was that Humphrey’s wife had been “an active member of a cult … that advocates adults and children have orgasms as a means of achieving inner peace.”

The Attorney General also found that Lyons and Martin also did not “register and report their activities on behalf of Howard to the secretary of state,” but declined to press charges against them, and no evidence was ever found that Brown ordered the mailings.

A week after McLaughlin’s report was released, Lyons suddenly disappeared from the campaign of New Jersey’s own Bret Schundler. At the time, Lyons was head of Schundler’s opposition research in the 2001 gubernatorial race against Jim McGreevey.

And now Lyons is back to his old tricks. His boss, Matt Leonardo, admitted to the New York Times that Lyon was working on a Swift Boat style full-length film to take down Menendez. (6/30/06)

Like Lyons, the Kean campaign as a whole also denied involvement with the film. First, Kean ducked the question in the June 25th debate with Menendez. Campaign spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker also said she knew nothing about it. But because of the pressure, the Kean campaign has been forced to admit to being behind the film.

This will likely kill much of the film’s effectiveness, since part of the Swift Boaters success was the fact that they were never directly linked to the Bush campaign. However, the Kean campaign’s aim may be to just get the issue out there into the public discourse, even if the Times and Star-Ledger refute the claims being made. Just because a talking point is disproven in the mainstream press doesn’t mean public perception follows. (For a glaring example, see PIPA’s October 2003 study that found over 60 percent of Americans had at least one of the following misperceptions about the Iraq war: U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; there is clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists; and people in foreign countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing it.)

However the Kean film plays out, you can bet Chris Lyons has more dirty tricks up his sleeve. After all, it is only July 1, and we’ve got over four months of this campaign to go.

Comments

[Shane Smith]

nice one Jon... looks like a real scoop ;^)

[Nick Lento]

Good Job,

Maybe someone out there can pass along this suggestion to the Menendez camp.

GO ON THE OFFENSIVE!!!

Make a quick video documenting the facts in this excellent piece.

Get live interviews along with the media quotes and have some kick ass commentary on just how foul these practices are. Maybe Bob himself should say a few choice words.

Put the video on the web for free for all to see...and allow downloads to be copied to dvd, vcd, svcd, mp4, avi, etc etc etc all formats.

Get this all done by the end of July.

If Kean withdraws the film he loses, if he runs with it...he loses worse.

If Kerry had done this kind of thing he would have won the Presidency despite the shennannigans in Ohio and elsewhere.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant.