GOP Consultant Quits In Phone Call Flap

A prominent political consultant for New York state Senate Republicans agreed to resign Wednesday after reports surfaced that he had made a threatening, obscenity-laced phone call to the 83-year-old father of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat.

Roger Stone, who in the 1970s worked on President Nixon's re-election effort and has also done work for Presidents Bush and Reagan, denied making the call and said he was "set up."

Stone said the phone number cited by Bernard Spitzer's lawyers is his, but the apartment is owned by a Spitzer fundraiser and someone else could have gotten inside to make the call or used other technology to mimic his voice and that number.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said Stone was still asked to resign and sever connections with the state Senate Republican Campaign Committee because the allegations could "only serve as a distraction from the real issues."

Lawyers representing the governor's father said the caller — recorded on an answering machine — told the real estate developer that he was going to be subpoenaed to testify before the state Senate investigations committee about 1994 campaign loans to his son, then threatened his arrest if he didn't appear, and used expletives and insults referring to the governor, a Democrat.

Letters about the call was sent to the state Ethics Commission and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Investigations and Government Operations, attorney Jeffrey Moerdler said. He told the Times Union of Albany that he didn't request an investigation but that the matter is now with government investigators.

Gov. Spitzer's spokeswoman, Christine Anderson, said the governor would have no comment.

Stone, 55, worked for the Committee to Re-Elect the President, which helped President Nixon beat George McGovern in 1972 and was at the center of the Watergate scandal. He also worked for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and in 2000, helped George W. Bush win the presidential vote recount in Florida.

Stone told the Associated Press that the phone call "has to be a fabrication."

"I would submit that such a message could be made, fabricated, and I will have voice experts inspect it," he said. "Just as they tried to set Senator Bruno up, they are trying to set me up, I guess because I have been effective on the Senate Republican Majority."

Ethics Commission spokesman Walter Ayres said the letter is being reviewed and the commission will take any appropriate action, but he said the members "only have jurisdiction over the executive branch of state government."

Bruno and Gov. Spitzer have been at odds for months. Most recently, they have sparred over the efforts of two Spitzer aides to discredit Bruno by releasing details of his state-funded travel. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo found no illegal conduct but criticized the Spitzer aides who had state police gather detailed information on Bruno's use of state aircraft.

Bruno called the aides' efforts political espionage. Spitzer has said he didn't know about it.

Republican George Winner, chairman of the Senate Committee on Investigations and Government Operations, said he hadn't received the letter about the call but he said it sounded like something more appropriate for a district attorney to review.

Winner also said that his committee is not investigating Spitzer's 1994 campaign loans from his father, but had asked the Senate Elections Committee "to look into the issue of loans as it relates to the ability of wealthy self-financed candidates and the level playing field issue as they compete against lesser, ordinary type of joes."

The loan at issue was given by Bernard Spitzer to help his son repay a $4.3 million bank loan in the 1994 Democratic primary for attorney general, which Eliot Spitzer lost.