INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

C-SPAN’S “NEWSMAKERS”

Guest: Bertha Lewis, Interim Chief Organizer of ACORN

Reporters: Alexander Burns, The Politico & Chris Good, The Hill

Moderator: C-SPAN

TAPE/AIR DATE: Sunday, October 12, 2008

AIR DATE/TIME: October 12, 2008 at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET

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STEVE SCULLY, HOST, C-SPAN’S NEWSMAKERS: Joining us on C-SPAN’s NEWSMAKERS program is Bertha Lewis, who is joining us from New York. She is an 18-year veteran of the organization, and an interim chief organizer.

And here in the studio in Washington is Alexander Burns, reporter for “The Politico.” Good morning to you. And Chris Good, who is a reporter with “The Hill” newspaper.

Bertha Lewis, let me ask you first, what is the relationship between your organization and Senator Obama, specifically, and the Obama campaign more generally?

BERTHA LEWIS, INTERIM CHIEF ORGANIZER, ACORN (ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS FOR REFORM NOW): Well, thank you for having me, because I really appreciate it.

But I think that’s the wrong question to be asking, what the relationship is. The ACORN political action committee endorsed Senator Obama, as millions of others have done. You know, we support his progressive agenda.

And quite frankly, we’ve been working in a nonpartisan way for over 18 months to register low and moderate income folks across the country, 1.3 million. So, his campaign was not involved in that whatsoever. This is a nonpartisan effort.

SCULLY: Has the campaign, though, provided any funds for ACORN in its voter registration drive?

LEWIS: Oh, no. Not one single penny has come from the Obama campaign for voter registration.

SCULLY: There had been some reports that the Obama campaign had provided up to $800,000. Where did that figure come from?

LEWIS: Well, you see, I think people like to mix things up.

The Obama campaign, it is my understanding, provided get-out-the-vote money to an organization called Citizen Services. Citizen Services sort of subcontracted with a couple of ACORN cities to do get-out-the-vote efforts in the primary. And I think we might have received a little less than $80,000.

So, the money did not come to us in any way for voter registration. And we certainly did not get $800,000. We did some small amount of work over a couple of weekends for get-out-the-vote efforts in the primaries.

SCULLY: There have been a lot of stories over the last couple of days about allegations of voter fraud. One specific example is the name Monica Ray, which has appeared on 10 or 12 different voter registration applications. Also, the Dallas Cowboys have been registered, and many people who have been listed as dead.

So, how do you explain all of that?

LEWIS: Well, first of all, again let me reiterate, we have registered over 1.3 million new voters across 21 states. These are all low and moderate income folks. Seventy percent of them are people of color – black, brown and Asian folks – and over half of them are under the age of 30.

Just because someone alleges something repeatedly does not make it true.

Let me explain to you our methodology. We’ve been working on registering voters in a nonpartisan fashion for 18 months. And the way we do it is, we check each and every card that comes in from our workers. By the way, we employed over 13,000 workers.

And by law, you must turn in every single card, no matter what the name is and what it says. When we get cards in from our workers, we call those folks that have just registered – three times – because we want to verify whether or not they actually registered, and that all the information is correct.

Any card, no matter how slightly suspicious it looks, we tag it, we flag it, we put it in a separate bundle, and we turn it in to election officials.

We also immediately dismiss anyone that we see has a pattern of turning in something that would be considered suspicious. And we work with law enforcement officials to make sure that anyone that would turn in fake cards is prosecuted.

So you see, all of the evidence that is being put out now saying that cards are questionable, we have provided the evidence to election officials and to law enforcement officials.

And that’s our methodology, and that’s what we do. So, our quality control system works.

SCULLY: Joining us here with the questioning, Alexander Burns of “Politico,” and Chris Good of “The Hill.”

Alex?

ALEXANDER BURNS, SENIOR EDITOR, “THE POLITICO”: Thank you.

Ms. Lewis, election law expert Rick Hasen told “Politico” on Friday that ACORN – with ACORN and these fraudulent voter registrations, he said, “This is a repeated pattern. They’ve got a systemic problem that they need to work on.”

Are you reviewing any of your quality control mechanisms in the aftermath of these new reports?

LEWIS: First of all, we’ve constantly reviewed our quality control during the 18 months that we’ve conducted our voter registration.

I think the repeated pattern here is the pattern of Republicans and some folks constantly going after us as the largest organization of low and moderate income people in this country.

And so, in 2006, they came after us, again with these lies and exaggerations and allegations. Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales tried to do everything they could to discredit us. But you know what? It proved that none of those allegations was correct. And so, we do review constantly this.

When you register 1.3 million – just imagine – even if 300,000 prove to not be correct, that’s over a million new voters that are going to be coming out to the polls, people that are black and brown, poor people. That actually is the most patriotic thing that people can do.

So, yes, there’s a pattern of attacks. There’s a pattern of allegations. But just because you repeat a lie doesn’t make it true.

CHRIS GOOD, ONLINE REPORTER, “THE HILL”: Now, Ms. Lewis, I wanted to ask about the McCain campaign specifically, because they have sort of come out and attacked you. They put out a Web ad, which is basically sort of a YouTube commercial against you on Friday, I believe. And they held a conference call last week calling for an investigation of you.

And I heard one of your spokespeople say, I believe on Friday, that a lot of these attacks, these charges of voter fraud, are sort of aimed at pushing an agenda that will restrict the electorate, sort of narrow who can vote, push for voter ID laws.

Do you see the McCain campaign specifically as doing that, pushing that agenda?

LEWIS: Well, I see those who are coming after us as having that agenda. I mean, it really is shameful to sort of cast aspersions on the largest low-income community organization in the country.

The McCain campaign came out very forcefully, criticizing and making fun of community organizers and, therefore, community organizations.

I do think that when you try to cast doubt on folks who have registered to vote, it does work to sort of suppress the vote. And also, we are very worried that this campaign of attacks against us will be a sort of imprimatur for people to move ahead and take people off the voter rolls. So, we are very concerned about this.

We think the McCain campaign really ought to encourage people registering and encourage people voting. That’s the most American thing you can do in this most important election.

So, we are worried that this is an attempt to suppress the vote for those who have historically been left out, for those who have had no voice. We will continue to encourage people to vote, because we want to give voice to the voiceless.

So, the McCain campaign and others can do everything that they want to suppress the vote, but they should know that people are going to come out. And we’re going to make sure that people’s most precious right, the right to vote, is protected.

SCULLY: Ms. Lewis, let me follow up on Chris Good’s point, because we have the ad that he was just referring to, and we’ll show it to our audience and get your reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZONA, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I’m John McCain, and I approve this message.

ANNOUNCER (voice-over): Who is Barack Obama? A man with a political baptism performed at warp speed. Vast ambition.

After college, he moved to Chicago, became a community organizer. There, Obama met Madeline Talbott, part of the Chicago branch of ACORN. He was so impressive that he was asked to train the ACORN staff.

What did ACORN in Chicago engage in? Bullying banks, intimidation tactics, disruption of business.

ACORN forced banks to issue risky home loans – the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we’re in today.

No wonder Obama’s campaign is trying to distance him from the group, saying Barack Obama never organized with ACORN. But Obama’s ties to ACORN run long and deep. He taught classes for ACORN. They even endorsed him for president.

But now, ACORN is in trouble.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are at least 11 investigations across the country involving thousands of potentially fraudulent ACORN forms.

ANNOUNCER: Massive voter fraud. And the Obama campaign paid more than $800,000 to an ACORN front for get out the vote efforts, pressuring banks to issue risky loans, nationwide voter fraud.

Barack Obama – bad judgment, blind ambition. Too risky for America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCULLY: Bertha Lewis, your response?

LEWIS: Oh boy, oh boy. As my mother would say, a liar is a liar is a liar. And because you tell a lie, it does not make it fact.

Let me just say, yes, Barack Obama was an organizer in Chicago. But he was not an organizer for ACORN.

Let me say also that, Barack Obama, over a three-year period of time, may have come to ACORN to give a speech to ACORN organizers – twice, less than an hour each time, unpaid – just as many, many other organizers and other activists across the country have done.

Yes, the ACORN action committee did endorse Senator Obama, just as millions of others have.

And this question of us being able to force big, powerful banks to give risky loans – now that is the biggest lie of all. In fact, since 1999, we have constantly, constantly fought against predatory lenders. And that’s on record, and the McCain campaign knows that.

We have constantly, constantly asked the Congress and other officials to beef up their lending regulations. And the McCain campaign knows that.

We were the ones that were sounding the alarm since 1999 that such a thing as this current mortgage crisis would happen. In fact, we are the ones across the country who have been helping people that are in danger of foreclosure and default.

Do you know, right here in New York State, when ACORN counsels a family to get a mortgage, that our default rate is zero? And across the country when we have helped low and moderate income families get mortgages, the default rate is less than three percent.

So, it was ACORN who, for over 20 years, have been sounding the alarm about protecting low and moderate income families.

Boy, oh boy, I sure wish we had the power to force banks to do the right thing.

GOOD: Ms. Lewis, just to jump in there, you know, ACORN has pressed for banks to be friendlier to borrowers. Conservatives, since this crisis started, have said that it’s people being lent money when they can’t pay it back that has caused the financial crisis.

What do you make of that argument in general?

President Bush recently came out and said it was both, it’s deregulation and people getting loans they shouldn’t be getting.

You know, just – whether or not your organization was able to force banks’ hand, what do you make of that argument as a whole?

LEWIS: Well, they’re absolutely right. No one should get a mortgage that they can’t afford to pay.

And that’s why, for 15 years, ACORN has been saying, make sure that everyone – whether you’re rich, you’re poor, you’re black, you’re white – everyone should be counseled. There should never be a loan made to people that would put them in jeopardy.

That is not what ACORN pushed for. We fought against redlining against minority neighborhoods and people who were shut out of the credit system.

We worked for and fought for a really good program, that if the banks had followed the criteria of the Community Reinvestment Act, none of this would be happening.

These are brokers who were allowed to just run amok. These are banks who were very greedy, because you could lend money. It didn’t matter, because you weren’t going to keep it on your books. You would slice and dice the paper, sell it off in risky securities.

So, again, we absolutely believe that no one should get a loan that they can’t afford. It wouldn’t make much sense for us as a community organization to want people to get loans in communities that would destabilize them.

We want people to stay in their homes. We want people to have sound mortgages. And we have proven over the years that, when you do follow sound criteria, that people stay in their homes and their neighborhoods are stabilized.

But deregulation and no looking out for scurrilous and greedy brokers, and other banks and financial institutions – that’s the real cause, not sound, counseled loans that were made under the Community Reinvestment Act.

BURNS: Ms. Lewis, if I could just go back to the question of voter registration for a moment. You’ve said a number of times that Republicans and the McCain campaign are lying …

LEWIS: Yes.

BURNS: … about your organization’s connection to voter registration fraud.

LEWIS: That’s right.

BURNS: Regardless of whether or not your organization is intentionally forwarding fraudulent forms, you do pay your registration employees in such a way that it incentivizes (ph) them to pursue just sheer numbers of registration forms. They do get paid by the registration.

LEWIS: No. Excuse me. That’s not true. We pay our registration workers by the hour.

That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve done, because we don’t want people having an incentive to make fake cards. We pay by the hour.

So, I want to make sure that people know the facts, and not the allegations.

BURNS: Well, that’s been fairly extensively alleged, and some of your former employees have confirmed that.

So, if I could just ask, even if – even if you’re correct, and you pay by the hour rather than by the registration form, what incentive do employees have to turn in so many fraudulent forms? Because it doesn’t seem to me to make sense that someone would hand in fake forms for the Dallas Cowboys, if they didn’t have some kind of reason to do so.

LEWIS: Well, all I can say is, when we see a worker that has even the slightest pattern of suspicious cards, we dismiss them, and we dismiss them right away. And the record shows that we, in fact, turn these folks in to the authorities, and have participated in helping to prosecute folks who have done that.

If you are a worker and you’re working for a company, and maybe you’re lazy, and maybe you just want to get away with being paid for a full day’s work without doing the work, I think that that besmirches all of the hardworking folks who get out there honestly in the hot sun, the cold weather, stand out at supermarkets and bus stops, who go door-to-door.

And so, you may find a few – a very few – who just want to take the money and not do the work. But again, we identify them. We turn them in to the authorities. And we ask law enforcement to prosecute those folks, because when they come to apply for a job with us – and in our training we make sure that we tell people, it is a crime to fake cards. And if you are caught, we will assist law enforcement in prosecuting you to the fullest extent of the law.

We’ve had 13,000 workers, and we’ve had less than 200 that we’ve had to dismiss.

BURNS: Ms. Lewis, I don’t mean to belabor the point, but there are a number of organizations involved in voter registration efforts, including party committees, both major party presidential campaigns. The Obama campaign in particular has launched a massive national voter registration drive.

They haven’t been implicated in these kinds of problems. So, what is it about the way ACORN does business that leads to these kinds of issues?

LEWIS: Well, I don’t think the question is what is it about the way ACORN does business. What is it about ACORN? We’re 38 years old. We’ve been organizing low and moderate income folks in this country. We have been on the front lines of fighting for immigration reform, fighting predatory lenders, foreclosures, fighting for minimum and living wages. So, we are the organization that, 365 days a year, challenges the establishment to be fair and just.

And so, it is my wonder also. Are other organizations that are doing voter registration – I am sure that none of their cards are perfect. We are not perfect either.

But the question is, why would these folks that consistently go after us – why do they do this? Because we are the largest organization of black and brown folks, that have been shut out in this country.

And you know what? They can keep going after us, they can keep making allegations, but we will never stop organizing poor people to make sure they have a voice in this democracy.

GOOD: Ms. Lewis, you’ve just concluded this drive where you’ve registered 1.3 million new voters. You said it’s a historic figure.

Blame aside for how, you know, the faulty registration cards got to election officials, do you think that you need to be doing a better job as an organization of doing quality control and monitoring that?

LEWIS: We can – you can always improve your quality control. The allegations, by the way – and nothing has been proven – when you look at that number of cards after employing 13,000 workers for over 18 months, and 1.3 million new registrations, it’s less than one-half of one percent.

Now, I think that people who have businesses and organizations around the country might think that less than one-half of one percent of any effort that they’ve made is pretty good. But you can always improve. And believe me, in our next voter registration drive, we will improve.

But aside from that, there will be one million new voters – this is exciting – coming to the table. Poor people, young people, black people, brown people, you know, working families.

This is the most patriotic thing that people can do. And this is exciting to have a million new voters come out to the polls in November.

GOOD: Back to quality control just for a second, I know that you’ve said that, in most cases when you get investigated for turning in faulty cards, it’s actually election officials following up on cards that you’ve flagged for them, that …

LEWIS: Exactly.

GOOD: … you have sort of reviewed and said, OK, this doesn’t look right, but we’re turning it in to you anyway, because we have to.

In the current investigations, I think I counted about 10 states where, you know, from 10 to, I think, 2,000 in Indiana, cards have been turned in. People are reviewing that.

How many of those cards – do you have any idea – are cards that you have flagged, or just cards that they came up with on their own, the election officials?

LEWIS: Well, I can’t really say. But I would guess that 90 percent of them, we flagged ourselves.

And you know, what would be very good in assisting us in the future in quality control would be if the election officials in each of these counties and states, if they would meet with us regularly, as we’ve asked them to do so many times over the last 18 months.

Let’s have a system by which organizations that do voter registration actually have to meet with election officials in those counties. Let’s set up a system where folks meet regularly, and you review your cards on a regular basis.

I think that that would help not only ACORN, but the county officials and all of these boards of elections, as well as other groups. Because I don’t want to see any other group who registers people to vote have their cards questioned.

So, I think quality control is a good thing to improve from our point of view. But what would really be helpful is if we worked hand-in-hand with elected officials in the future.

BURNS: Ms. Lewis, you’ve leveled some pretty serious charges against Republicans in general, the McCain campaign in particular. But you’ve also referred to your voter registration drive as nonpartisan …

LEWIS: Yes.

BURNS: … a number of times.

What percentage of your registration forms would you estimate are Republican registration forms?

LEWIS: Well, we do know that, when we ask people to register, it is totally nonpartisan. You don’t ask them to register for any particular party. We don’t tell them who to vote for.

The people that we register are poor people, working families. Most of them are minorities. And if you look at the statistics – not ours – the statistics say that the majority of those folks lean toward the Democratic Party. Well, that’s their choice.

But we know that we’ve registered Republicans. I actually have some Republicans in my own family. We’ve registered independents.

And so, we don’t want to know what people pick as their party. We just want them to register. And once they’re registered, we want them to vote.

GOOD: And just real quickly, since your PAC, I believe, your political arm, has endorsed Barack Obama for president, does that corrupt at all your claims of nonpartisanship in registering people?

And does that matter? You know, does it matter if you’re partisan or not when you try to register people to vote?

LEWIS: Well, I don’t think that Republican organizations that register people to vote, that that would taint them also. When you register people to vote, you are nonpartisan. And when you endorse someone, and you begin to do get-out-the-vote activities, that is completely after any registrations have been done.

But, of course, we do want to make sure that folks are not thrown off the rolls, that the rolls are not purged. And we want to make sure that our members and other folks in low and moderate income neighborhoods do vote. So, we will do a get-out-the-vote effort, and we will do an effort for the folks that we’ve endorsed.

Our ACORN political action committee will be getting out the vote from our members. We have 400,000 member families across the country. And those are the people that have endorsed Barack Obama, and those are the people that we will be getting out to vote.

SCULLY: And finally, Bertha Lewis, has the political action committee arm of ACORN ever endorsed a Republican candidate?

LEWIS: Well, not nationally. But I dare say, this whole thing about voter registration and people voting, you know what the real impact is going to be? On the down ballot places.

Remember, there are congressional races and state races and local council races. That’s where this million new voters are really going to count. And that’s where, on the local level, you’re going to see people voting for Democrats, Republicans and Independents in their local communities.

So, that’s what’s really exciting, because before this, no one had to compete for their votes in these low-income communities. Now they know people have voted. They’ve registered.

And the policies that are going to affect them well after this presidential election, that’s what really counts. And that’s where people are really going to have a voice and some power to practice democracy.

SCULLY: Bertha Lewis, who is the chief organizer for ACORN, joining us from New York. Thank you very much for being with us on C-SPAN’s NEWSMAKERS program.

LEWIS: Thank you so much for having me. If you’re not registered, register. And if you’re registered, make sure you vote.

SCULLY: And Alex Burns, as we continue the discussion, you have a story that’s posted on “Politico” over the weekend, that this is giving the Republicans a new line of attack. How so?

BURNS: Well, this investigation into ACORN comes at a time when the McCain campaign is trying to bring up Barack Obama’s past associations with figures and organizations in Chicago that are now sort of questionable in the public eye.

And Obama did represent ACORN in a lawsuit in the ‘90s. He did participate in some of their events. And so this, used in connection with all the material about William Ayers, and sort of on a sub rosa level about Jeremiah Wright, this is enabling the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee to say, is this someone whose character you can trust.

SCULLY: Chris Good, did she answer the questions you were looking for?

GOOD: Yes, I think she did. There were a lot of questions about what ACORN does to try to get people to – that are working for them – to, you know, to not turn in faulty cards. I think she addressed that.

I mean, they’re – she said that they’re flagging cards, helping out election officials as best they can. You know, it’s kind of hard to know without talking to those officials and knowing what kind of relationship they have with ACORN more specifically, but I think she addressed them pretty well.

SCULLY: And yet, for both of you, why does this issue continue to come up? The cable networks, Fox, “New York Times,” “Politico,” “The Hill” – you’re all writing about it.

BURNS: Well, I think that Ms. Lewis is correct, that Republicans do like to bring up voter registration fraud in election years as a way of casting aspersions on the voter rolls and making it possible to do voter challenges, and things like that.

But also, I think it is important to know that this is a recurring problem for ACORN. And I don’t think that Bertha Lewis was entirely forthright in talking about why this problem keeps happening. I do think ACORN could stand to do a little bit more self-scrutiny in this.

GOOD: I think it’s important to note that, before the McCain camp started bringing this up, they already had a base of people who were angry at ACORN.

You know, since the House started working on their first Wall Street bailout bill a couple of weeks ago, everybody was up in arms, conservative bloggers all over the place saying, you know, this bill is going to give an earmark to ACORN. It was going to put some – designate, I think, 13 percent of any profits from toxic assets that were sold to go to a housing trust fund that government officials could then, you know, designate to whoever they want.

But people were upset that they thought the money was going to go to ACORN. So, if you read the conservative blogs back from a couple of weeks ago, people were talking about ACORN before any of these allegations of voter fraud.

So, it was kind of an easy target for McCain. You know, their Las Vegas office gets raided, and they know that there’s all these conservatives who are already angry at ACORN, already talking about ACORN.

SCULLY: Chris Good of “The Hill,” Alex Burns of “The Politico,” thank you both for being with us and joining in the questioning with Bertha Lewis of ACORN. And thank you for joining us on NEWSMAKERS.

BURNS: Thanks very much.

GOOD: Thank you.

END