Angelides Attack Ad Points Back at Him

SACRAMENTO —  A TV ad by state Treasurer Phil Angelides excoriates Controller Steve Westly for raising campaign cash from “a corrupt Chicago businessman” -- yet Angelides apparently sought fundraising aid from the same man.

Angelides, who is competing with Westly for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, and his aides placed repeated calls to Chicago attorney Joseph Cari in early 2005 in search of fundraising help, a Cari spokesman told The Times. Cari had raised money for a number of nationally prominent Democrats, including former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

Angelides’ calls, placed over a number of weeks, amounted to “stalking,” said the spokesman, Ken Jakubowski, a Chicago attorney and longtime Cari associate who called the treasurer’s TV ad “misleading.”

Cari, who awaits sentencing on criminal charges in an Illinois pension fund scandal, declined to comment.

Angelides and Westly, locked in a tight race, have been trading bitter charges in a barrage of increasingly strident commercials as the June 6 primary approaches.

Angelides’ recent ad, airing prominently across California, opens with a grainy picture of Cari.

“This is Joe Cari,” the narrator intones. “He’s a corrupt Chicago businessman who gave Steve Westly thousands in campaign contributions.”

Westly’s picture appears, and the narrator continues: “Westly then steered public pension funds to Joe Cari’s investment company....

“Now Joe Cari has pleaded guilty to extortion in a pension fund scandal.”

Cari was charged in a federal indictment in August 2005 with one count of attempted extortion in the Illinois case, which involved a kickback scheme. In 2003 and 2004, he and his partners in a venture capital firm helped Westly raise about $50,000. Cari himself gave Westly $4,000, which Westly has since returned.

The venture capital company, Healthpoint Capital Partners Ltd., was not implicated, and Cari’s actions were unrelated to California pension funds.

Angelides, asked as he campaigned over the weekend whether he had contacted Cari for help raising money, did not deny calling him.

“I’ve called a lot of people over time for my campaigns, and the fact is I never accepted money from him,” Angelides said. “I never met the man or had any discussions with this guy.”

Jakubowski said Cari did not return Angelides’ calls because Cari was trying to reduce his involvement in politics.

As The Times reported last month, Westly took an interest in Healthpoint in 2003 and urged the staff of California’s giant public employee pension fund to consider investing in it, which the staff eventually did.

Westly and Angelides both sit on the state’s main public pension boards, and both have raised millions in campaign donations from companies and individuals seeking lucrative pension fund investments.

Healthpoint’s partners included, in addition to Cari, prominent former New York state Comptroller H. Carl McCall. Records and interviews show that it was McCall’s job at Healthpoint to win California business. As part of that effort, McCall asked Cari to help Westly raise money.

The firm’s principals organized or attended several fundraisers for Westly in New York and Chicago in 2003 and 2004.

The California Public Employees Retirement System agreed to invest $5 million in Healthpoint in 2004.

In early 2005, Angelides began calling Cari seeking fundraising help, according to Jakubowski and a former aide to Cari. The aide said she heard multiple phone messages left for Cari in which a caller identified himself as Angelides.

The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize her current job, said the Democratic treasurer was “hounding” Cari.

Jakubowski elaborated: “Angelides telephoned Mr. Cari on three occasions, leaving detailed messages on Mr. Cari’s voicemail,” he said. “During the same time period, individuals identifying themselves as calling on behalf of Mr. Angelides telephoned Mr. Cari on four or five occasions.”

Until his indictment, Cari was sought after by ambitious Democratic politicians. He had been a senior partner at a major law firm and served as a Democratic National Committee finance chairman.

He was Gore’s fundraising chairman during the 2000 presidential campaign.

“It was Joe’s reputation and skill as a fundraiser that Angelides sought,” Jakubowski said. “So Angelides’ own actions contradict his own ad.”

Noting that Angelides has stirred anger with attack ads in past campaigns, Westly spokesman Nick Velasquez said Angelides’ recent commercial was part of a pattern.

“He is at it again this year with ads that bend the truth and cover up his own actions,” Velasquez said.

Westly was the first of the two men to run negative ads in the current campaign, despite a pledge not to.

*

Times staff writer Joe Mathews contributed to this report.