Former Employee Says McMahan Chased Abstractor Donations In Successful 2002 Campaign

FIFTH IN A SERIES ~ A former employee of the State Auditor & Inspector's office in Tulsa tells The McCarville Report Online that Jeff McMahan personally chased donations from abstractors in his 2002 campaign. The auditor & inspector regulates abstractors and issues their certificates of authority to do business. She said McMahan ended one meeting so he could get to an abstractor's office "to pick up a check."

Lisa Long, a longtime Democratic Party activist who now works for the Cherokee Nation Casino & Resort, said she is breaking her silence over what she witnessed in the auditor's Tulsa office because "there's a need to know" about what she and others observed about campaign activities centered around the Tulsa office once McMahan became the Democratic nominee. At the same time, Long is a fierce defender of her former boss, Clifton Scott, whom McMahan replaced, and said Scott always was careful to avoid even the appearance that office employees and state property were being used for political purposes. Scott was auditor & inspector for 20 years and now heads the Oklahoma School Land Commission.

Another former employee, Dana Webb, was district manager of the Tulsa office in January 2003 when McMahan fired her for supporting other candidates, Democrat John Fodge and then Republican Gary Jones, for the office. Webb's allegations of questionable campaign use of the Tulsa office spurred this week's TMRO examination of McMahan's campaign finance reports and the discovery that he has received 581 separate donations totaling almost $96,000 from his office's 164 employees.

That examination of McMahan's campaign finance reports also revealed that he has received 220 donations totaling $149,000 from abstractors, who are licensed and regulated by the auditor & inspector. Much of his early abstractor support, in 2002, came from disgraced former State Senator Gene Stipe and his then-abstract company partner, Steve Phipps of Kiowa, their associates and employees of their nine abstract companies. (For more background, see previous articles this week.)

A well-known Oklahoma Democrat said he recalls that McMahan has seemed "obsessed" with donations from abstractors. "He said once there's a lot of cash out there and 'I'm gonna get it,'" he recalled in a "don't use my name yet" interview with TMRO. Long recalled that during the meeting in Dodd's office, McMahan complained that his opponent, Jones, was talking about abstractor donations to McMahan. McMahan made the remark that "only 24 percent" of his contributions were from abstractors.

Long, who has been active in Governor Brad Henry's campaigns, and the campaigns of other top statewide and local Democrat candidates, corroborated Dana Webb's account of political activities in the Tulsa office after McMahan won the Democratic nomination, and said that during a late August 2002 meeting at the offices of 1st congressional candidate Doug Dodd in Tulsa, McMahan was impatient to leave that meeting to pick up a check from an abstractor. She said, and a secret tape recording of the meeting confirms, that he complained that he'd had to "beg" abstractors for donations and then had to "work" abstract company employees for donations, going back to them time and again. In the secret recording of the meeting, one of the women says, "But abstractors have been very good to us," and laughter followed. McMahan said he didn't know where one Tulsa abstract company was located and those in the meeting got a phone book, looked up the street address, and gave it to him. He said he had to leave to make sure he could pick up a check by 4 p.m. The name of Buffalo Abstract Company was mentioned by McMahan.

Long said she resigned from the auditor & inspector's staff after 15 years of service in September 2002 and later went to work at the casino because she could not support McMahan and knew her future there if he won was bleak. She recalled an incident in which he came into her office and closed the door behind him: "He said 'I need you on my team,'" she recalled. "I told him I just couldn't do that. He said it again and he had that look on his face...so I knew I had no place there." State law prohibits retaliation against a state employee for declining to engage in political activities. McMahan said this week that since he left the auditor & inspector's payroll in April 2002 to campaign, he could not have had an influence over office employees. However, Long and Webb say he frequently was in the Tulsa auditor's office after that time and came and went as he pleased, often interacting with, or conferring with, employees.

Despite that, the two women say, McMahan was dismissive of the quality of the Tulsa staff during their meeting at Dodd's headquarters. They recall him saying that the "group" in Tulsa "doesn't work" and "isn't a fit." The secret recording includes a lengthy discussion of the Tulsa office staff and McMahan's comments about their work.

During the conversation, the recording reveals, McMahan made it clear that Jim McGoodwin, then the auditor's director of special investigations, was making personnel changes "before Clif leaves," the implication being that changes were being made by McGoodwin on his own; McMahan said McGoodwin had made some "rash decisions" and that "even Clif doesn't know what he's doing," they recalled McMahan saying. McGoodwin now is McMahan's deputy state auditor and general counsel. The women cited the comments on the secret recording as evidence of their belief that once McMahan won his party's nomination, Scott effectively lost control of the far-flung auditor's operation and the Tulsa office became, essentially, an adjunct campaign headquarters.

Long said that after McMahan became the Democratic nominee to succeed Scott, "the whole atmosphere (inside the Tulsa office) changed...more political." She said Scott always insisted that any political work not be done on state time and that there was to be no use of state property for any campaign purpose. "That all changed," Long said. She said she, like Webb, witnessed the use of a state copier and copy paper to produce materials for fundraisers, that several employees openly solicited donations for McMahan inside the office, that fundraisers for McMahan were often planned by some in the office and that campaign t-shirts were sold inside the office to employees and others. "All that is true, what Dana said," she added. All such activities are banned by state law. Under state law, however, there is a 3-year statue of limitations on prosecution, so any investigation of those activities, as requested Thursday in an interview with radio station KTOK by Republican auditor & inspector nominee Gary Jones, could not include these allegations.

McMahan, in an interview with KTOK that aired early Friday, described TMRO's reports on his fundraising as a "smear" campaign.

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