DeForest Soaries, the man who wants the power to delay the election

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/11/election.day.delay/index.html

Newsweek said the discussions about whether the November 2 election could be postponed started with a recent letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge from DeForest Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Soaries, who was appointed by President Bush, is a former New Jersey secretary of state and senior pastor of the 7,000-member First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset.

Newsweek reported that Soaries expressed concern that no federal agency had the authority to postpone an election and asked Ridge to ask Congress to give his commission such power.

From DeSoaries' "official Bio" on the EAC Web Site:

http://www.eac.gov/soaries.asp?format=none

Dr. Soaries is also the Senior Pastor of the 7,000 member First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey. A pioneer of faith-based community development, Dr. Soaries has led First Baptist in the construction of a new $17 million church complex and the formation of many not-for-profit entities to serve the community surrounding the church.

[theivoryqueen]

1. ahh - the dedication

to his job... Mind boggling, really.

[AirAmFan]

2. Could this new fearmongering be tied to WH vote suppression plans

for November? What particular skills does Soaries bring to his job? Is he one of the NJ pastors Geraldo regular Ed Rollins bragged about having "paid off", in "Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms"?

I find it very frightening that apparently Soaries, Ridge, and Ashcroft are planning how to "protect" polling places on Election Day. How many people are inside a polling place at the same time? Wouldn't terrorists find 100x as many people concentrated in the same square footage in other places? I don't think it's terrorists we have to worry about interfering with voting in November. I think it's Republicans.

Having been Whitman's Secretary of State, Soaries must know how suppressing African-American votes succeeded in squeezing 911 Commission chair Tom Keane into Morven (the Governor's mansion) during the Reagan era. Maybe Rove is coaching him on how to take Keane's "Republican Ballot Security Task Force" concept nationwide, at tazpayer expense.

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From http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V13/23/mcdonald-1.html

'Americans might like to think that discrimination against minority voters ended with the civil-rights movement, but it's been going on in many parts of the country ever since. And BALLOT-SECURITY programs have been the usual vehicle. A notorious "anti-fraud" initiative was implemented before the 1981 gubernatorial election in New Jersey. The Republican National Committee formed a National Ballot Security Force.... On election day, the security force dispatched armed off-duty police officers wearing official-looking armbands to heavily black (and Democratic) precincts in Newark, Camden and Trenton. The Republicans also posted signs warning that the polls were being patrolled by security-force members and offering a $1,000 reward for anyone giving information leading to the arrest and conviction of election-law violators....

The Democratic National Committee filed suit against the New Jersey and national Republican parties, and it was eventually settled. The defendants agreed not to post security forces at polling places or allow any other election tactics that targeted minorities or deterred them from voting. Despite the agreement in the New Jersey case, the Republicans resorted to similar maneuvers in Louisiana in the 1986 U.S. senatorial campaign involving Democrat John Breaux and Republican Henson Moore. ... Republicans ... launched still another ballot-security program in North Carolina in 1990, during the heated U.S. Senate contest between Republican Jesse Helms and Democrat Harvey Gantt.... After the election -- which Helms won -- the Justice Department sued the North Carolina Republican Party and the Helms for Senate Committee. The defendants, without admitting any wrongdoing, entered into a consent decree in which they agreed not to undertake similar ballot-security programs in the future
without court approval. Copyright © 2002 by The American Prospect, Inc.'

[Mandate My Ass]

3. OMG I interviewed this man once!

He was touring NJ schools and speaking out against racism and violence when I was working on a S Jersey newspaper. I remember him being very defensive even though I was lobbing him softballs. Wow!

[AirAmFan]

4. Did you ask him how much money he got from Ed Rollins?

If you didn't, it's not too late!

Remember Ed Rollins, Ronald Reagan's campaign manager and "Geraldo" regular on CNBC? He wrote a very revealing autobiography called, "Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms"/

Rollins bragged openly about "vote suppression" efforts to help elect Whitman by shaving voter turnout in Newark, Trenton, Camden, etc. He told reporters he "paid off" Democratic precinct workers to slow things down, and about having paid NJ ministers to keep quiet about Democratic candidates.

Since Governor Whitman made Soaries her Secretary of State, my question still is in order.

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From http://archives.cjr.org/year/94/1/cynicism.asp

Columbia Journalism Review January/February 1994

"Insider Cynicism: Ed Rollins Meets the Press, by Christopher Hanson

Rollins is, or was, a Republican political consultant. The Sperling breakfast is a Washington institution of sorts -- held some 2,600 times over the past twenty-seven years -- in which journalists, hosted by The Christian Science Monitor's Godfrey "Budge" Sperling, gently question figures like Rollins and report the responses they find newsworthy.

At a November 9 Sperling breakfast, Rollins, boasting about how he had just helped win a governorship for New Jersey's Christine Todd Whitman, said the campaign had spent about $ 500,000 to suppress the black vote. He said GOP operatives had made payments to Democratic precinct workers in black areas on condition they sit on their hands on election day. And he said the Whitman campaign had contributed to church charities in return for black ministers keeping mum on the virtues of Democratic incumbent James Florio.

Paying off black clergy? Suppressing the votes of a group that had fought a bitter, protracted struggle to secure the franchise? These were explosive assertions.

How did the reporters react? A person unaccustomed to the ways of Washington might imagine a mad dash as the session broke up, reporters elbowing each other to get through the doors and grab the phones, hell-bent on double-checking Rollins's claims, eager to file big take-outs for the next day's editions.

This was not exactly how things went, however. Of the fourteen to twenty daily newspaper reporters at the breakfast (estimates vary), at least nine did not file on Rollins's suppression remarks that day -- including representatives of the McClatchy newspapers, the St. Petersburg Times, Hearst, Media General, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer....

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today each kissed the story off in a couple of paragraphs. The Los Angeles Times buried a truncated 344-word version of a Washington Post account on page A21.

It was later reported that Rollins had made similar statements about vote suppression three days prior to the breakfast -- in conversations with GOP spinmaven Mary Matalin, who co-hosts a CNBC political talk show; semi-retired columnist Rowland Evans; and MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour reporter Margaret Warner. None of the three had seen fit to report Rollins's assertion prior to the breakfast. (Warner told The Washington Post that, after she read the breakfast stories, "In general, though not in every specific, I had the feeling I'd heard it before.")"

[Mandate My Ass]

5. Holy crap!

I don't know why but I'm shocked. :wow:

[AirAmFan]

6. There could be a BIG SCOOP here for an enterprising reporter

Compare two sentences from two sources:

From http://archives.cjr.org/year/94/1/cynicism.asp

"Rollins ... said the Whitman campaign had contributed to church charities in return for black ministers keeping mum on the virtues of Democratic incumbent James Florio."

And, from http://www.eac.gov/soaries.asp?format=none

"A pioneer of faith-based community development, Dr. Soaries has led First Baptist in the construction of a new $17 million church complex and the formation of many not-for-profit entities to serve the community surrounding the church."

Put the two sentences together and you can come up with many more questions for Soaries. For starters, "How much money did First Baptist charities got from the Whitman campaign.?"

[blm]

7. I'll bet he is one of RevMoon's stable of black ministers.

Moon has been courting them for over a decade.....always to wield political power.

[Eloriel]

11. Hah! There aren't any "enterprising reporters"

But then you knew that.

[AirAmFan]

21. It's not as though his name is "John Smith". With a unique name like

"DeForest Soaries", simple googling allows for checking him out pretty well. I googled "DeForest Soaries" and got 1500 hits, a manageable number to check thoroughly for somebody on the clock somewhere.

[Mari333]

8. I never understood the concept of a black republican

But the color of GREEN seems to make anyone into a turncoat to their own peoples best interests.

[AirAmFan]

9. "The best way to fight poverty is to make sure YOU are not ...

one OF them."

Or that's how I remember the crassest Black Republican motto I ever heard. I may have a few words wrong, but I remember the statement was semi-literate and came from a GOP nominee to I believe the Civil Rights Commission, I believe it was under Reagan, and, if my memory serves me, the man was from San Diego.

Dr Soaries seems cut from the same cloth. See my hunch in posts 6 and 4 above.

IMO the question you have to ask is, why did the WH want an African-American for this job? To me it's a tipoff that something horribly racist may be planned.

I worry that Deforest Soaries may make Clarence Thomas look like Martin Luther King!

[mondo joe]

10. Black republicans are like Chickens for Colonel Sanders

It's a mystery.

[AirAmFan]

12. "I hope the brother got paid ENOUGH". That's what Jesse Jackson

once said when this kind of Black politician got caught with his hand in the till. That's the Achilles Heel of people like this--greed.

[Beacho]

13. Anyone got an email?

for this MotherF*****?

Got some words for him

[ethimtemp]

14. The sad part about this bastard is....

he ran for a congressional seat in predominantly repuke district in central jersey last year. He lost so BAD that the only explanation for how bad he lost was that repukes voted AGAINST him.......for, of course, a white dude.

Even after getting slapped with a good dose of repuke reality, he still wants to sleep with the enemy.

Around here, he is held is such low esteem by the black community that he is considered the next Clarence Thomas.

Also that $17Million church has been "under construction" for at least 7 years. Seems that through mismanagement, some "contractors" ran off with a ton of money and left the place vacant and covered with weeds/trees and construction materials. To my knowledge, it still isn't complete.

[AirAmFan]

16. This could turn into a real research project. Do you know the names of any of his

church charities? Also, what is the exact zip code for First Baptis Church in Somerset NJ?

Many tax-exempt charities have IRS Forms 990 online at http://www.guidestar.org . If you have time, take a look through the results of a zip-code search there and post the names of likely prospects here. If you give guidestar just an email address and a choose a password, you can then view PDFs of charities' reports to the IRS.

Unfortunately, most church charities don't give any financial details. But this guy sounds arrogant enough to have left a paper trail.

[AirAmFan]

17. Update: Soaries charities DO have IRS forms online!

donsu posted Soaries church pastor homepage, at http://www.fbcsomerset.com/about/staff/senior.shtml :

"A pioneer of faith-based community development, Rev. Soaries has led First Baptist in the construction of a new $17 million church complex. He has also led the church in forming many not-for-profit entities to serve the community including the First Baptist Community Development Corporation; the Renaissance Community Development Credit Union; CDC Properties Housing Corporation; Renaissance Education & Technology Academy; and Harvest of Hope Family Services Network."

In NJ, towns often have just one zipcode. Somerset's apparently is 08873.

I typed this into the "zipcode only" search box at http://www.guidestar.org/search/index.jsp and got 137 hits, including SEVERAL in the list just above!

Next I'm going to click through deeper into the "double hits" on the guidestar page. However, I fear I'll find what FreeState found at Guidestar a few days ago. He was looking for sources of income for some Mormon "faith-based" enterprises. He found forms filled out with no details--just statements that, as church efforts, the charities need supply NO financial data. (See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1940754 )

There's "faith-based" accountability for you!

[AirAmFan]

18. Reviewing four sets of online tax returns from Soaries charities

No, there's no smoking gun--no documents online linking Soaries to the Whitman campaign charitable hush-money mentioned in posts 4 and 6. However, what there is is rather detailed about finances. So we may conclude that Soaries "faith-based" efforts are more accountable and transparent than those of the Mormons. But that's a "left-handed compliment"!

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http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/Facts3.html Christie Whitman challenged Jim Florio for Governor and won for the first time in 1993. She was re-elected, beating Democratic challenger James McGreevy (the current governor), in 1997.

The oldest documents I could find online for Soaries charities go back to 1997, the year of Whitman's re-election.

Since Ed Rollins's payoffs had been public for three years by then, the Whitman campaign would have been insane to repeat direct payoffs to pastors to shut up about 1997 Democratic candidate Jim McGreevey.

Here's the list of the oldest relevant documents I found: You may not be able to view these pages until you've given guidestar.org an email address, chosen a password, and logged in:

First Baptist Community Development Corporation; the http://www.guidestar.org/controller/searchResults.gs?action_gsReport=1&npoId=273481 http://documents.guidestar.org/1997/223/213/1997-223213404-1-9.pdf

Renaissance Community Development http://www.guidestar.org/controller/searchResults.gs?action_gsReport=1&npoId=705263 http://documents.guidestar.org/1997/223/546/1997-223546358-1-9.pdf

CDC Properties Housing Corporation; http://www.guidestar.org/controller/searchResults.gs?action_gsReport=1&npoId=442140 http://documents.guidestar.org/2000/223/377/2000-223377837-1-9.pdf

Harvest of Hope Family Services Network. http://www.guidestar.org/controller/searchResults.gs?action_gsReport=1&npoId=100078381 http://documents.guidestar.org/2000/223/694/2000-223694227-1-9.pdf

[tom_paine]

15. Have you noticed the Busheviks are turning to their African-American

Stooges (to those who think me racist for saying that, consider the multi-ethnic rainbow of unAmerican Bushevik Stooges) to put forth the truly reprehenisble ideas.

That AA Bushevik Campiagn Spokeswhore who called Edwards "sloppy seconds"

That corrupt AA Bushevik Reggie Smith and his "we can't even tell you why we can't tell you" about Sibel Edmonds' suit.

Now this...

Disturbing pattern.

Who says African-Americans can't be KKK-like or Nazi-like?

Calling Clayton Bigsby!

[bermudat]

19. African Americans are just tools for the repugnantcans.

Has anyone noticed whenever Bush or any big name repugnantcan is on television, they always plant black folks behind them for the camera. When that guy from Mississippi won the senate (or was it governorship) some months ago, there were about 3-4 black folks behind him. Jeb Bush planted some black folks behind him during his campaign last year when he was trashing Jesse Jackson campaigning in Florida. Bush or his wife are always in some schoolroom with black children, and you know when the camera stops filming they can't get away from them fast enough. I think JC Watts' father said 'a black man voting for a Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.' John Leguizamo said 'an hispanic voting for a Republican is like a roach voting for Raid.'

[linazelle]

20. Then they shun real black audiences like the NAACP...too afraid

to even entertain dissent. The biggest cowards/hypocrites ever.