Were Pacifica Fundraisers Involved in Teamster Corruption?

Date sent: Sat, 7 Aug 1999 20:18:07 -0400
From: Save Our Station <patty@inch.com>
Subject: Were Pacifica Fundraisers Involved in Teamster Corruption?

A member of SOS today received a call from the Share Group, the
professional solicitors retained by Pacifica to raise money. The caller,
Sarah Wilson, said she was calling from Boston and that they were
raising money for WBAI. She said that WBAI had a shortfall of $200,000
in its budget. She said they were asking listeners to donate from $50
to $100. When asked what the Share Group was, she said it was a
corporation, but "we are not very profitable." She said the Group raises
money for The Nature Conservancy and the NPR station WBUR.

The SOS member said that, with all due respect, giving money other than
directly to WBAI was undesirable. Sarah said no problem, they could send
the funding appeal and it would contain an envelope "for your check"
that would be "addressed to WBAI".

Later another member of the Share Group called to confirm the request
for the mailing and he said that the Share Group was a "large
corporation" that did "third party outbound sales" and that "90% of its
work was with non-profit groups".

Some searching on the web turned up the following:

Share Group, Inc.
58 Day Street
Somerville, MA 02144
Dennis McCarthy, President
(617) 629-4500

The Ohio Attorney General includes the Share Group in a long list of
"Professional Solicitors":
http://www.ag.ohio.gov/charitab/prosol96/pros.htm

According to the North Carolina Better Business Bureau, the "charity or
sponsor" receives on average less than 50% of the funds raised on their
behalf by the Share Group: http://winstonsalem.bbb.org/reports/10.html#5

Jimmy Hoffa's web site quotes news reports that accused the Share Group
of having been involved in the corruption of Teamster President Ron
Carey's re-election campaign -

In June of 1997 Larry Neumeister of The Associated Press wrote:

"In an FBI complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Davis
was quoted as telling a confidential witness that the Teamsters knew of
a plan to reimburse the wife of a Massachusetts telemarketing company
for contributions she made to Carey's campaign. Barbara Arnold, of
Carlisle, Mass., made $95,000 in donations when her husband, Michael
Ansara, was doing work for the Teamsters through his telemarketing firm,
Share Group Inc. Ansara's attorney has said Ansara and Arnold have been
cooperating with investigators. According to the complaint, Davis told
the telemarketer to make fewer get-out-the-vote calls than his contract
with the Teamsters required, and to use the remaining funds to make the
contributions." - http://www.hoffa96.com/art10fbi.htm

Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Republic wrote:

"According to investigators, the scheme worked as follows: last year the
Teamsters paid more than $97,000 to Share Group, Ansara's telemarketing
firm, to make calls on behalf of Teamster-friendly Democrats running for
Congress. But a Teamsters official asked Share not to make all of the
calls it was supposed to make; Ansara took the leftover money and funnelled it to
his wife, who then wrote a check for $95,000 to Teamsters for a
Corruption-Free Union. That group in turn, passed the money on to a
consulting organization called the November Group, a now-defunct
telemarketing and fund-raising firm that last year did work for the
Democratic National Committee. One of the two principals in the November
Group was Davis. The November Group used the money to finance the
mailing of a million pro-Carey fliers to union members at the same time
the election ballots were mailed." -
http://www.hoffa96.com/art38nrm.htm