Ensign: In a new bind re Hampton affair

Early last year, Senator John Ensign contacted a small circle of political and corporate supporters back home in Nevada — a casino designer, an airline executive, the head of a utility and several political consultants — seeking work for a close friend and top Washington aide, Douglas Hampton.

“He’s a competent guy, and he’s looking to come back to Nevada. Do you know of anything?” one patron recalled Mr. Ensign asking.

Reports the New York Times.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

The job pitch left out one salient fact: the senator was having an affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife, Cynthia. Ensign was looking for a way to get Doug Hampton out of Washington D.C.

Ensign told Michael Slanker that Mrs. Hampton was ill and Doug Hampton was weary of flying back and forth between Washington and Las Vegas; that Hampton would be returning to Nevada. None of that was true. Ensign was enlisting Slanker’s help in finding Doug Hampton a job in Las Vegas.

Slanker suggested Hampton could revive “Ensign Inc.,” where Slanker had served as Ensign’s top fund-raiser and political consultant. The company Mr. Slanker and his wife had formed to help run these campaigns, November Inc., had become dormant after the couple moved to Washington to help Mr. Ensign run the Republican committee in 2007.

Mr. Slanker said he proposed that the firm could be revived, giving Mr. Hampton a well-known base in Nevada political circles to start a small government affairs practice. “That afternoon, the senator and Mr. Slanker met with Mr. Hampton.”

“Whatever clients you can get — you can eat what you kill,” Mr. Slanker recalled telling Mr. Hampton of the deal.

Ensign agreed to help line up three or four clients who would pay Mr. Hampton enough to match or surpass his $144,000 Senate salary as an administrative assistant, Mr. Hampton said.

Senator Ensign lined up several donors as Hampton’s lobbying clients. Ensign and his staff then repeatedly intervened on the companies’ behalf with federal agencies, often after urging from Mr. Hampton. Hampton was lobbying the Senator though federal criminal laws prohibited him from doing so, and Ensign knew it, but they decided to ignore the law.

…trying to clean up the mess from the illicit relationship and distance himself from the Hamptons, he entangled political supporters, staff members and Senate colleagues, some of whom say they now feel he betrayed them.

And Ensign, it is reported, helped those clients of Hampton. He called the secretary of transportation last year to plead the case for a Nevada airline, Allegiant Air, which was under investigation for allegedly overcharging for tickets. Ensign arranged for Mr. Hampton and his clients to meet the new transportation secretary in a successful effort to resolve a dispute with a foreign competitor.

NV Energy, the largest power company in Nevada, had a problem in the summer of 2008. The utility had been waiting more than a year for the Interior Department to finish an environmental assessment of a proposed $5 billion coal-burning plant.

The company figured that if Mr. Bush left office without the environmental report’s being approved, the entire project could be stalled indefinitely. Nevada Democrats, including Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, had spoken out against the plan.

Weeks earlier, Mr. Ensign had contacted Michael Yakira, the chief executive of NV Energy, and inquired about work for Mr. Hampton, the company acknowledged in an e-mail message. The company and its executives were reliable supporters of the senator, contributing more than $50,000 to his political causes over the previous five years. After Mr. Yakira met with Mr. Hampton, the company hired him, through November Inc., to do “lobbying coordination” of federal officials, according to a copy of the contract.

…the senator also spoke with other Nevada power brokers, including Maurice J. Gallagher Jr., the chief executive of Allegiant Air, the Las Vegas-based discount airline; Bob Andrews, a financial industry executive; Sig Rogich, a prominent Republican consultant; and Paul Steelman, a casino architect and developer. In the conversations, Mr. Ensign did not specify what type of work Mr. Hampton might perform, but the executives he contacted said he had made it clear that Mr. Hampton would be well suited for consulting that drew on his Senate experience.

But Hampton was irritated because Ensign had not provided him with enough clients to lobby for. Hampton e-mailed Ensign:

“You have not retained three clients for me as promised, and your poor choices have led to a deep hurt and financial impact to my family,” Mr. Hampton wrote the senator in an e-mail message in July 2008. “At your request and your design, I left your organization to save your reputation and career, and mine has been ruined.”

That lead, ultimately, to Ensign’s parents paying Mr. and Mrs. Hampton and two of their children $96,000 which the Senator maintains was just a gift to the Hamptons.

Related posts:

1. Ripples from the Ensign affair
2. Ensign’s “Dear John” letter to Cynthia Hampton
3. The Ensign Affair Plot Thickens
4. Jon Ralston’s Questions of Senator Ensign
5. Maddow on the John Ensign Affair