The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Sanford Dickert, who was fired by the Massa Campaign after a short tenure as campaign manager, has created a website devoted to his legal case.  It contains a huge number of documents, including court filings and supporting information.

Between his site and email conversations with Dickert, I've learned more than I've ever wanted to know about this dispute.  In this post, I'm going to do my honest best to separate out the charges that are relevant to the election from those that are part of the employment dispute.  Based on my review, there are three:

1. Was there illegal activity that Massa knew about and should have reported?
2. Is Massa trying to duck payment of a debt he's contractually obligated to pay?
3. Did Massa commit perjury?

My conclusion:  There's no solid evidence to support any of these claims in the mountain of paper released by Dickert.

Let's begin with a bit about the evidence presented by Dickert.  He provides a number of documents that, to my knowledge, haven't been previously available to the media.  These include the employment contract between him and the Massa Campaign, and the preliminary filings for arbitration between the parties.

There's a wealth of information here, but it's mainly in the form of allegations, not facts.  Dickert includes some emails and campaign literature to support some of his allegations, but he generally points to the affidavits of some of his friends to support his reading of the case.  The Massa campaign has yet to provide most of their side of the story, which I assume would include their affidavits.

In other words, we're at the beginning of a process, this discussion is premature, and the best evidence (except for the contract itself) is he-said/he-said.  With that in mind, let's look at the charges that could be made against Massa that are relevant to his character:

1.  Massa knew about illegal activity he should have reported.

Let's start with some background. Dickert is an adjunct professor at Cooper Union in New York City.  When Dickert was hired by the Massa campaign, he apparently brought one of his former students and that student's friend with him as volunteers for the campaign.  These two were 18 and 19 years old, and they quit the Massa campaign the day Dickert was fired.  While in Corning, the students were housed in an apartment paid for by the campaign (at Dickert's suggestion, and perhaps without Massa's approval, though that's up for dispute).   A third resident of the apartment was another college-age boy, and the fourth was a 25-year-old woman who also worked for the campaign.

In his affidavit, Massa alleges that Dickert provided alcohol for underage drinkers in that apartment.  This charge is based on after-the-fact evidence:  Massa and the landlord apparently found beer and vodka in the apartment after Dickert was fired.  Dickert and the Cooper Union students claim the alcohol was purchased by the 25-year-old.  What's important for this discussion is that the only evidence that Massa had was circumstantial, and it was discovered after Dickert and the students left town.

The second major claim is that Dickert asked Massa's 16-year-old son to stay the night in the guesthouse where Dickert was living.  This charge is the least-well-documented of the whole bunch.  As far as I can tell from my email correspondence with Dickert, this looks like some kind of misunderstanding between Massa and Dickert.  My sense is that Dickert doesn't really understand how touchy parents can be about their teenagers.  But Massa certainly doesn't allege that anything remotely illegal happened between his son and Dickert.

By the way, the newspaper stories don't mention that the 16-year-old was Massa's son, presumably because they don't print the names of minors involved in alleged crimes.  However, it's clear in the now-public documents that Massa's son was the only 16-year-old involved.

Finally, there's the charge that Dickert solicited high-school boys for employment in the campaign.  The affidavits from Dickert's students bear this out.  The dispute is over whether he should have been doing it.  Massa thinks it's illegal and says he specifically instructed Dickert not to do it.  Dickert says it isn't illegal.  The real issue here isn't the supposed illegality: Massa also contends that parents complained about Dickert's solicitations, which of course is poison to a campaign.

In addition to the possibly salacious (but actually fairly tame) allegations, there are a few charges about Dickert's lack of knowledge of Federal Campaign laws, but none of that rises to the level of anything reportable to authorities.

I should note that in my first post, I hadn't seen the documents and assumed that the liquor and 16-year-old story were somehow connected to a party (especially since some damage occurred at the apartment).  That's not true, and I apologize for the error.  The truth is actually less damaging to Massa - something illegal might have happened, but nothing that happened could be credibly reported to the authorities.

2.  Massa's trying to get out of paying an obvious debt.

This brings us to the beginning of this whole mess:  the employment contract.  As an outsider, I have to read it as it stands, without the interpretation that Dickert and Massa attach to it.  I'm not a lawyer, but I've been involved with negotiation of contracts far more complex than this one.  I wouldn't have signed this contract.  There should have been more detail around the termination section, and more discussion of termination in general.

Dickert's position is that the Massa Campaign owes him at least $39,000, plus a $50,000 win bonus if Massa wins the election.  The campaign's position is that they owe Dickert a hell of a lot less than that, that he was terminated for cause, and that fraud is involved, since he misrepresented his resume.

I don't think we need to go into the nitty-gritty detail to determine whether Massa's ducking a bill.  My take is that Dickert gets to $39,000 using some extremely optimistic arithmetic that includes damages that are called for by a state labor law of questionable applicability.  In addition, the $50K is a no-go, because he was terminated for cause, and the contract says that he gets that money only if the termination was without cause.

Common sense doesn't have much place in a legal proceeding, but it does have a place in this discussion, since we're trying to see if Massa is trying to welsh on a debt.  Dickert was employed for about six weeks, and actually worked for a little more than a month, since he took some unpaid leave.  For his work, he expects between $39K and $89K, depending on how the campaign turns out.  Clearly, Dickert didn't work out.  That's got to be at least partially his fault, and his short tenure can't be the key to victory.

A reasonable person would not fork over potentially $89K for one month of work.  This is a legitimate dispute, not a ruse to avoid payment.

3.  Massa committed perjury.

This is the weakest accusation of the bunch.  Massa's affidavit in this case was signed under oath, so if he lied in that document, he's a perjurer.  The supposed evidence for this perjury is that Massa's account differs from three other affidavits filed in the case.

Two of the other affidavits are those of Dickert's student and friend.  They deny a couple of the charges made by Massa, but these two only saw a little bit of the entire picture.  In addition, they're clearly loyal to Dickert, having left the campaign the day he quit.  At best, this is a difference of interpretation, not evidence of perjury.

The other affidavit is by the woman who recommended Dickert to the campaign.  It addresses the issue of Dickert's inexperience.  In my opinion, it's a straw man.  Massa is charging that Dickert lied about leaving the Kerry campaign in 2004.  The affidavit shows that Massa was told that Dickert was inexperienced -- it doesn't address the more serious charge of misrepresentation.

Perjury is just a non-starter in this he-said/he-said dispute.

My conclusion is that there's nothing here that would make a reasonable person change their vote.  That doesn't mean that this whole mess won't affect votes.

I don't want to speculate about why this information was released less than a week before the election, but I hope we can return to the real issues of the campaign.  This is a sideshow.