I suspect Al Sharpton’s legion of detractors are in for another disappointment.
It is beyond question that Sharpton’s finances — especially the $4.5 million in state and federal tax liens — have long been an unholy, unforgivable mess, with many of the gory details laid out in damning detail in a long New York Times investigative piece that graced the paper’s front page this week.
These are the same back taxes I wrote about in July 2008, shortly after federal prosecutors dropped a criminal probe of the Rev. and his organization, the National Action Network. As I noted at the time, Sharpton’s legal team — including former U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter, who is now the city’s Corporation Counsel — negotiated a deal under which he would pay between $2 and $9 million to resolve a host of personal, business and non-profit tax debts.
Yesterday, Sharpton told me that nearly all of the tax liability has been settled; that he has paid all of his personal taxes; and that the remaining balance of $800,000 includes $400,000 in penalties, which his attorneys are trying to get reduced.
Obviously, the whole episode reflects badly on Sharpton. Most people, confronted with mortifying front-page descriptions of millions in late taxes and suggestions of incompetence and possible fraud, would hide in a closet for a week or so, and remain in embarrassed seclusion until bankruptcy could be declared or debts paid off.
Al Sharpton, who emphatically is not most people, held a press conference. Then he hosted his 3-hour radio show, followed by his hour-long national TV show, which amounts to a typical day at the office for him.
Which is to say: This is a very unusual man, one who does not march to the same drummer as the rest of us. Like his friend Donald Trump, Sharpton cannot be embarrassed. Like his mentor, the late singer James Brown (for whom Sharpton was road manager for a decade), the reverend restlessly prowls the nation’s black communities, speaking in churches nearly every weekend and forging bonds that New York Times headlines cannot weaken.
People don’t turn out to Sharpton’s weekly rallies or tune into his radio or TV shows because he’s a whiz at double-entry bookkeeping.
Politicians — including President Obama and Mayor de Blasio — don’t seek Sharpton’s counsel because he can help with tax policy.
And in the desperate, confusing hours after a questionable police killing, desperate families forced to juggle legal questions, funeral arrangements and a media frenzy don’t contact the National Action Network because it’s an accounting firm.
All of which is to say: The critics who have been trying to usher Sharpton off the public stage for the last 30 years inevitably lose sight of the plain fact that he is extremely useful, or at least credible, to a lot of people.
MSNBC, for instance, makes a ton of money from Sharpton’s “Politics Nation,” which last week, on a typical night, attracted 484,000 viewers, finishing second in the cable ratings to Fox News in its time slot and beating CNN’s “Situation Room.” Radio One, which syndicates his talk-radio show into dozens of markets from coast to coast, is also making money from its arrangement with him.
Far from chasing media coverage, as his detractors often charge, Sharpton has painstakingly built his own national audience. And far from somehow scamming money from settlements in civil-rights cases — another common accusation — Sharpton told me in 2008 that he made $750,000, all from media gigs. That was before the MSNBC show, which probably pushed his income well over $1 million.
This still leaves the nagging question of how the books got so screwed up and the taxes went unpaid — and whether, as a result, Sharpton, even after making millions in payments to the IRS (which should eliminate the liens), should somehow be drummed out of public life.
I doubt that will happen. Media companies will hire him as long as he delivers an audience, and any politician or pundit would be crazy not to tap into one of the savviest political operators in America.
And when it comes to the gritty, thankless business of stepping into the middle of racially charged situations like the killing of Eric Garner in Staten Island or the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Sharpton regularly challenges his detractors to do a better job of fighting for civil rights than the National Action Network.
Few ever take him up on the offer. And that is why nobody should expect Sharpton to vanish anytime soon.
Louis is political anchor at NY1 News.
