Commentary: Slosberg alleges ex-flack's flap on 'payroll' reflects green, as in envy
By George Bennett
Palm Beach Post Columnist
Monday, July 24, 2006
In consultant-speak, the phrase "you should have had me on the payroll" isn't about money, veteran political/PR hired gun Barry Epstein says.
When Epstein used those words in a recent e-mail to Democratic state Rep. Irving Slosberg, he says he wasn't complaining about missing out on consulting fees from Slosberg's lavish state Senate campaign. All he was saying, Epstein told the Politics column, was that Slosberg should have listened to his advice.
Relations between former allies Slosberg and Epstein frayed Thursday when Epstein organized a news conference for a businessman who accused Slosberg of exaggerating his hurricane relief role last year. Slosberg dismissed the claims.
Slosberg said Epstein was just being a sorehead because he hadn't tasted any of the more than $650,000 Slosberg has spent on his Democratic Senate primary race against attorney Ted Deutch. As evidence, Slosberg forwarded a July 16 e-mail he received from Epstein, who worked on Slosberg's victorious 2000 campaign against former state Rep. Curt Levine.
"I am not going to work on a commission basis, period, and you should have had me on the payroll," read Epstein's e-mail. "Remember who got you where you were. You don't want to be another Curt Levine, do you? You have everyone else in the world on the payroll, and your most important closest confidante who has been loyal to you right from the gitgo you throw away."
Epstein says Slosberg ignored his advice for making peace with U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, who has become Slosberg's chief critic, and for calming the ruckus that led to Slosberg's removal from the county Health Care District board. Had he been "on the payroll," Epstein says, Slosberg might have paid him more heed.
He's already had President Bush and VP Dick Cheney in South Florida to headline campaign fund-raisers, so it's only natural that U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw, R-Fort Lauderdale, would turn to the next figure in the presidential line of succession. Shaw's campaign says it has lined up House Speaker Dennis Hastert for an Aug. 3 money event in Fort Lauderdale.
Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean's speaking gig at a sold-out Wednesday lunch in West Palm Beach is the latest coup for the Democratic Professionals Forum, the 10-month-old group led by Gunster Yoakley attorney Bryan Miller that has drawn potential 2008 Democratic presidential hopefuls Evan Bayh and Mark Warner to previous events.
Dean's appearance came about after the DNC heard about Miller's group and contacted him.
"The buzz is pretty strong," said a Washington DNC operative.
Miller and attorney Rebecca Cavendish launched the group so Democratic lawyers, business types and others in the suit-and-tie crowd could network with each other and meet — and potentially write checks for — Democratic candidates. Miller was in Tampa recently to talk with some Dems about setting up a similar organization there.
There was suspense right up to the end of last week's candidate qualifying period. At Thursday night's county GOP Lobsterfest in Palm Beach, political consultant Richard Pinsky was telling Republican activists there was still a chance that County Commission Chairman Tony Masilotti would come out of his self-imposed lame duckery and file for his seat before next day's noon deadline.
It didn't happen.
Lobsterfest attendees included Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson, a Democrat who won his nonpartisan job by capitalizing on partisan Democratic support in 2004. Anderson, who attended the county Dems' Jefferson-Jackson fund-raiser last month, has been making bipartisan gestures of late.
Reprinted by permission from Palm Beach Post, published July 24th, 2006