By In an effort to save her father, Dana Siegelman handed out more than 2,000 fliers to passers-by last week while standing on the corner of Park Avenue and Second Street, on Second Street in Belmont Shore, and at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.
Siegelman is a 23-year-old Cal State Long Beach communications graduate and the daughter of convicted former Gov. Don Siegelman. Her fliers urged people to watch an episode of “60 Minutes” that aired on Feb. 24, which detailed her father’s recent trial, sentencing, and the controversy surrounding it.
Bribery charges
Her father is the former Democratic governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman, who served from 1999 to 2003, and was found guilty in 2006 on seven counts. The counts included bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud. The jury dismissed 25 of the original 32 counts.
Also convicted was Richard M. Scrushy, a former CEO of the Birmingham, Ala.-based HealthSouth Corporation. He paid off $500,000 in debts that Siegelman had accrued from his 1999 legislative initiative to implement a state lottery. Through funding a state lottery system, Scrushy and Siegelman hoped to generate aid for state education – a central platform issue for Don Siegelman.
In exchange for the payment, Scrushy received a seat on a state hospital licensing board. According to Dana Siegelman, Scrushy did not want the position but took it because he felt he was the most qualified candidate. He was already a multi-millionaire and had made many generous donations to the state in the past.
Don Siegelman was taken into custody June 28, 2007, and has nearly seven years left to serve of his 88-month sentence, Dana Siegelman said. Don Siegelman is serving his sentence at a federal penitentiary in Oakdale, La., with no possibility of parole. Scrushy is also in federal prison, serving 82 months.
“It’s unusual to see a bribery prosecution where the payment wasn’t to the defendant,” said former Federal Prosecutor David A. Sklansky in an article in The New York Times last September.
However, not everyone sympathizes with Siegelman’s case.
“Siegelman is the one who defrauded citizens by engaging in this pay-for-play,” said J.B. Perrine, assistant U.S. attorney, to the Times. “The underlying offense they are trying to cover up is Siegelman’s criminal activity.”
Conspiracy
Dana Siegelman and some of her supporters believe her father’s conviction is part of a greater conspiracy against the Democratic Party. According to her, the investigation and trial were lead by President George W. Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove. She said their plot was intended to take down one of the most influential Democrat officials the state of Alabama has ever had.
Don Siegelman, who called his case “The Watergate of 2008” in an Associated Press interview, told the Times in June 2007 that “Karl Rove’s fingerprints are all over [the case].”
When Don Siegelman narrowly lost his re-election campaign for governor in 2002 to Republican Rep. Bob Riley, he was considered by many as Riley’s biggest Republican competitor for the Alabama gubernatioral 2006 election. According to Dana Siegelman, this motivated Rove to manipulate federal courts to destroy her father politically.
However, the conviction did not mark the first time that Don Siegelman had encountered legal inquiry. Other charges against Don Siegelman have included a Medicaid scam in 1999 – which was dismissed in 2004 for lack of evidence – and an investigation led by Karl Rove that started in 2002 to find him in compromising sexual positions with a member of his staff.
His sentencing in 2007 marked his first conviction.
In June of 2007, Republican attorney Dana Jill Simpson testified that she overheard a 2002 conversation where Republican campaign consultant Bill Canary implied that Rove and other attorneys were taking legal action to neutralize Siegelman’s careeer.
Clearing his name
In an interview with the Daily Forty-Niner, Dana Siegelman explained the impact her father’s conviction has had on a personal and national level.
When her father’s trial was over and he received his sentencing, she said she had never “felt that feeling of destitute and loneliness. It was horrible. I felt trapped.”
At the time of his conviction, she was studying abroad in Israel for her master’s degree in peace and conflict studies. Distracted and depressed, she decided to return home and fight for her father’s release.
After her initial hesitation to leave her coursework, she said she was certain she had made the right choice when she arrived.
“[I thought], OK. I did a right thing… I know I can fight here.”
Since her return to the U.S., Dana Siegelman has been utilizing media resources on the West Coast to create awareness about her father’s controversial case and conviction. Through interviews on national radio and television, local television and hours of handing out fliers, she said she is actively doing “anything to educate people.”
So far, Dana Siegelman has been surprised about her success and the overall response of the public.
“The acceptance level is a lot higher here,” she said. She also explained that getting the information out in California is crucial because Californians are from all over and have connections across the country.
Community response
Some of the local proponents she was able to find from her night on Second Street were members of the Long Beach Area Peace Network (LBAPN).
“They are incredible people,” she said. “They just came up to me and said, ‘What’s this about?’ And all of sudden, I had four extra hands helping me.”
The LBAPN is a grassroots activist group with a goal of bringing better awareness for world peace.
“I want this issue to be a part of the bigger issue, which is that our Justice Department for the entire nation has been corrupted by this administration, that taking a freedom away from one man only threatens the rest of us,” Dana Siegelman said.
“She looked solid and determined,” said Naida Tushnet, a former president of the LBAPN, who was among those who helped her on Second Street.
Tushnet also said that this was a good example of the “pure politicalization” within the Justice Department and that political pressure was neccesary to force an appeal or presidential pardon.
Room for Change
Dana Siegelman expects the upcoming presidential election to change this situation and hopes this kind of scenario will never happen to another family.
“This year is to give the government back to the people,” she said. “We are supposed to be a democracy. We are living in a dictatorship. We can be spied on. We can be arrested without any documention and taken away from family. We do not live in a democracy anymore. We think we do.”
Dana Seigelman said that although her father has not officially endorsed a candidate, she would be satisfied with either of the Democratic candidates.
“It’s a beautiful thing to feel empowered and stand up for what you believe in,” she said. “Shying away from the problems in the world won’t get us anywhere.”
Andy Franks and Yuko Hirose also contributed to this report.
