The Democrat rule of operations: By any means necessary

Evidence points to left-wing activist as source of Boehner affair rumor

Onlookers were startled last Thursday when a man with a video camera approached House Minority Leader John Boehner after the event in Sterling, Virginia at which GOP lawmakers outlined their "Pledge to America" for this November's elections. The event had been open only to credentialed press, but as Boehner left, he saw a group of Tea Partiers standing across the street and went to speak with them. That's when the man with the camera moved in. "Speaker Boehner [sic], have you been cheating with Lisbeth Lyons, the lobbyist for the American Printing Association?" the man asked. "Have you been sleeping with Lisbeth Lyons?" Boehner walked silently past the man and never acknowledged his presence.

Within 24 hours, there was a story on the Drudge Report headlined PAPER: DEMS PLAN SEX HIT ON BOEHNER? It seemed to come from nowhere, but in fact it came from that brief moment in Sterling, and the man who stepped out of the crowd.

The man was a left-wing blogger and provocateur named Mike Stark, who has made a career of trying to publicize sensational charges against Republican politicians. A few hours after his encounter with Boehner, Stark posted video of the moment on the left-wing Daily Kos website as well as his own website, StarkReports.com. "While everyone knows that John Boehner enjoys the good life of luxury travel and golf junkets, many are convinced that [he] enjoys a mistress, too," Stark wrote. "I began hearing this from several sources last month with increasing amounts of detail, including the name of the lobbyists [sic] Boehner is supposedly having a relationship with -- Lisbeth Lyons, Vice President for Government Affairs for the American Printers Association."

Prior to Stark's confrontation with Boehner, no one had publicly suggested that the Minority Leader was having an affair with Lyons, or with anyone else, for that matter. (Boehner's office says the accusation is completely false.) But after Stark posted the video of his questioning of Boehner, the New York Post not only reported what Stark had done (without naming him), but also went a step further to report that "insiders on Capitol Hill are buzzing about an upcoming New York Times expose that will detail an alleged Boehner affair." The Drudge Report then picked up the Post article.

When he posted the video of Boehner, Stark also posted an audio clip of a brief call he made to Lyons. Lyons asked what media outfit Stark was with, and Stark said he was with the Huffington Post and Daily Kos, as well as StarkReports. Lyons told Stark, "I actually have no comment on that," and that was the end of the conversation. She later told the New York Post that she found Stark's question "highly insulting&hellipas well as unfounded."

The incident in Sterling was reminiscent of another Stark operation in 2006 that targeted George Allen, the Republican senator from Virginia who was running for re-election against Democrat James Webb. At the time, Stark wrote on his then-website, callingallwingnuts.com, that he wanted to put his "guerilla tactics to use where it matters: winning elections." The candidate he wanted to beat was Allen.

At the time there was a rumor going through the left-wing blogosphere that Allen had spit on his first wife, Anne, and that there was proof of the incident in the couple's sealed divorce papers. No evidence ever emerged to support the charge (and Allen was already suffering over the "macaca" incident), but Stark and other left-wing activists were determined to push it into the larger media conversation. So in late October 2006, Stark approached Allen at an event in Charlottesville, Virginia, yelling "Why did you spit on your first wife?" Allen staffers grabbed Stark and hustled him away, but the incident was captured on television cameras. As Stark hoped, the story made it onto TV and into the pages of the Washington Post, which reported: "W. Michael Stark, who identified himself in an e-mail after the incident as a University of Virginia law student, yelled a question at Allen about whether he had ever spit on his first wife, an unsubstantiated charge that has been circulating on liberal blogs on the Internet."

It was a big success for Stark; he had taken a rumor on the left-wing blogs and pushed it into the mainstream media. Now, he's trying to do the same thing with Boehner. Will he succeed? There's no doubt the White House, Democrats, and their allies in the press would love to see a damaging story on Boehner appear before November 2. On the other hand, there are no indications that the Times, despite its recent interest in Boehner, is working on a story about any alleged affair. Whatever the case, everyone should be very, very careful when the only person pushing the story is Mike Stark.