Notorious Republican political operative Roger Stone is getting involved in the New York gubernatorial race. But he’s got nothing good to say about the Republican frontrunner in the race. No, Stone told me today, in one of the state’s darkest hours New Yorkers should turn to the woman Eliot Spitzer called when he was feeling down — convicted madam Kristin Davis.
Davis has said she was one of the madams Spitzer dealt with before he resigned from the governor’s office in 2008. She spent four months in jail for her crimes and is still in probation. Now, Stone said she’s got the platform to shake up the race for Spitzer’s old job. He describes it as “pure libertarianism.”
“Prostitution, marijuana, gay marriage and guns,” Stone said, listing the things Davis would push to legalize if elected.
Writing on her blog this weekend, Davis made her case. Stone said that legalizing and taxing prostitution and marijuana could bring billions to New York’s empty coffers.
“When was the last time a candidate put forward this kind of honest, radical platform?” Davis wrote. “When is the last time a politician offered the voters something different than higher taxes, more spending, greater debt and service cuts.”
Davis wrote her campaign won’t just be about raising revenue, however.
“I will also run to highlight the inequities of our criminal justice system which discriminates against women, minorities and poor people, a system which sent me to jail while Eliot Spitzer broke the law and walked away free,” she wrote.
Stone said Davis first became interested in seeking electoral office after her time in jail.
“She wasn’t very political until she spent four months at Rikers Island and saw how fucked up our system is,” Stone explained.
The unlikely partnership between the infamous Stone and the would-be famous Davis began when the two appeared on a radio show together, Stone told me. He said he came away impressed with the former madam and the two became friends. Stone said he is Davis’ chief adviser in her gubernatorial bid but said that he only took the job after Davis came to him with the idea.
I asked Stone the obvious question — just what kind of stunt is this, exactly?
He assured me Davis was serious, and that she genuinely hopes to shake up the race with her focus on legalizing pot and the sex trade. She’s reached out to the state’s Libertarian Party, but if they won’t have her, Stone said she’s prepared to start her own “Personal Freedom” party. Thanks to New York’s byzantine elections rules, that will require her to collect around 45,000 signatures from across the state by late June, a tall order for any politician.
But not every politician has Davis unique assets, which Stone said includes “an enormous Army of strippers.” On the money side of things, Stone said Davis has lined up financial support from “Northern California pot farmers” and her long list of “ex-clients.”
Or, to put it another way: “The people want bread and circuses — I got the circuses part,” Stone said.
In a year where the Republicans, at least in theory, could have a very good chance of taking back the governor’s mansion in New York, I asked Stone why he wasn’t backing Rick Lazio, the current front runner for the GOP nomination. He said he wasn’t backing Davis to help the GOP.
“He’s boring, he’s got nothing interesting to say,” Stone said of Lazio. Worse, he added, Lazio “can’t raise five bucks.”
He didn’t have anything better to say about either current Gov. David Paterson, or the Democrat expected to run against him in the primary, state attorney general Andrew Cuomo.
Stone said he’s focused on Davis. He said she’ll make a formal announcement of a bid at the end of the month, and he predicts Davis will get the signatures necessary to make it on to the ballot. After that, “who knows? It might be about getting her into the debates.”
In the end, Stone told me, Davis has what it takes to appeal to a broad swatch of voters tired of the same old thing in New York.
“Politics is about being interesting to the voters,” he said. “It’s even better if the messenger and message are attractive.”
