Consultant’s dual roles emerge in DeKalb contracting probe

Education: Dartmouth College, bachelor's degree, 1977; Emory University School of Law, 1980.

Professional: Practiced with three law firms, including Hunton & Williams, where he was managing partner for four years. In 2002, he founded the Kevin Ross Group, which combines a law practice with political consulting and public affairs work.

Political: Managed more than a dozen successful political campaigns for Democratic elected officials including U.S. Reps. John Lewis and David Scott, former Atlanta Mayors Bill Campbell and Maynard Jackson, and DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis.

About the DeKalb corruption probe

A special grand jury was convened under DeKalb District Attorney Robert James early last year to investigate allegations of corruption involving contracts in DeKalb County’s water and sewer department. By law, special grand jury deliberations are conducted in secret. But clues have emerged to what its focus might be in search warrants the district attorney has executed and witnesses that have been called. Here are the key developments so far.

A description of a DeKalb County probation services contract has been updated since this article’s original publication.

One by one, Bill Campbell’s inner circle fell. Top aides to the Atlanta mayor, his political advisers, even his poker buddies found themselves facing criminal charges in a drawn-out federal investigation of City Hall corruption. But one confidant remained conspicuously unscathed: Campbell’s campaign manager, Kevin Ross.

It wasn’t until Campbell himself went on trial that Ross entered the spotlight — as the first witness for the prosecution.

Six years later, another corruption case is drawing attention to Ross, and this time he is one of its apparent targets. Last week, authorities raided Ross’ office and home as investigators simultaneously served search warrants at the residence and government office of one of Ross’ former political clients: DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis. Authorities seized personal bank records, computers and material involving campaign contributions to Ellis, apparently trying to link the two men to allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks involving county contracts.

Neither Ross nor Ellis has been charged with a crime. Both denied wrongdoing.

The investigation, however, brings into focus the highly fraught relationships often forged between elected officials and their political gurus. Like many other political consultants, Ross fills time between campaigns representing companies that seek business with government agencies — sometimes ones run by an official whose election he engineered.

“He earns their loyalty because he delivers valuable electoral services and becomes a trusted political adviser,” said Sharon Gay, an Atlanta lawyer who worked with Ross on Campbell’s first campaign for mayor. “The tricky part is: How do he and the elected official manage that loyalty after the election is over?”

For more than a quarter-century, Ross has guided some of the Atlanta area’s most prominent Democrats, especially African American Democrats, to victory. In the first race he managed, in 1986, he helped John Lewis defeat another icon of the civil-rights era, Julian Bond, for a congressional seat. He went on to manage the final campaign of Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor, in 1989, and then signed on with Jackson’s favored successor, Campbell, in 1993 and again in 1997. More recently, he worked as a strategist on last year’s failed campaign for a 1 percent sales tax to pay for metro Atlanta transportation projects.

“Kevin has been a major player for a long, long time,” said Tom Houck, a political strategist who is close to both Campbell and Ross. “There’s very few things that happen around Atlanta — or DeKalb — that Kevin’s not involved with.”

Ross, 57, a Massachusetts native, came to Atlanta to study at Emory University’s law school. He joined the Hunton & Williams law firm and became managing partner of its Atlanta office. The firm did legal work for the city while Campbell was mayor, and Ross represented companies bidding on city contracts. Some of those companies also donated to Campbell’s campaigns.

The nexus between contracts and contributions dominated the federal corruption investigation, which netted more than a dozen guilty pleas and convictions from people close to Campbell.

Authorities zeroed in on Campbell’s 1997 runoff campaign against Marvin Arrington, then the City Council president. In three weeks, Campbell raised more than $450,000, almost 60 percent more than Arrington. About one-fifth of the money Campbell collected during that period was tied to one Clayton County developer who later pleaded guilty to violating federal banking laws to conceal the illegal contributions. The developer said another contractor linked to Campbell told him to provide the money if he wanted to do business with the city’s airport.

In a 2001 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ross said he had only recently learned that Campbell's campaign accepted illegal donations. If donors were promised city business, he said, "it was inappropriate and should not have happened."

Ross left Hunton & Williams shortly after Campbell’s second term ended, and he remained behind the scenes as prosecutors slowly prepared a case against the former mayor. Finally, a grand jury indicted Campbell on numerous corruption charges in 2004, nearly three years after he left office. When Campbell went on trial in 2006, Ross appeared as the government’s lead witness.

On the stand, Ross testified from a deeper knowledge of the campaign’s alleged wrongdoing. He described a scheme to seek contributions exceeding legal limits from city contractors and other donors. He also detailed the relationships between Campbell and his most trusted advisers, some of whom had already been convicted in the scandal.

A jury acquitted Campbell on corruption charges but convicted him of tax evasion. He served 26 months in prison before his release in 2008.

Despite his cooperation with prosecutors, Ross and Campbell are “still friends,” Houck said. Others with ties to Campbell’s administration said Ross’ testimony should have turned him into a pariah.

Regardless, within two years, Ross emerged as the strategist behind another rising Democratic star: DeKalb County’s Burrell Ellis. Almost as soon as Ellis, then a first-term commissioner, announced his candidacy for the county’s top elected post in early 2008, Ross signed on as campaign manager. With no Republican in the race, Ellis won the job in a runoff primary against former state Rep. Stan Watson.

Ross worked for free, campaign finance records indicate. Except for $2,000 to reimburse him for expenses, Ellis paid Ross nothing until 2010 and 2011, when he was campaigning for re-election. Ross, who did not manage Ellis’ second campaign, received about $91,000 for consulting fees.

In the meantime, Ross had gone from giving Ellis political advice to offering opinions on county business.

In 2010, Ellis moved to cancel a nearly $1 million contract for probation services with a company that competed with one of Ross’ clients, Sentinel Offender Services. Ellis rescinded the cancellation after judges complained he lacked the authority to choose the probation vendor.

Ellis also aborted the county’s $8.5 million contract for ambulance service, awarding the business to Rural/Metro Corp. — another of Ross’ clients.

Ross acknowledged in a 2010 interview that he urged Ellis to switch probation vendors, but he denied being involved with the ambulance contract.

The probation and ambulance contracts are among the five under investigation by DeKalb District Attorney Robert James, according to the search warrants executed last week. The warrants also sought material concerning another Ross client and DeKalb contractor, MWH Americas Inc., which is a contender to manage a massive project to upgrade DeKalb’s water and sewer systems. All three companies made relatively small contributions to Ellis’ campaigns, records show.

After last week’s raids, Ellis denied any connection between his campaigns and the contracts. “There is nothing wrong, nothing improper that I’ve done,” he told reporters. “There is nothing inappropriate to hide.”

Citing advice from his lawyer, Ross declined to be interviewed. His friend Jeff Dickerson, a public relations consultant, described Ross as “shell-shocked.” DeKalb authorities are “intentionally, methodically spreading the presumption of guilt,” Dickerson said. Before the raids on his home and office, Dickerson said, Ross had received no inquiries about the investigation.

“To go from that to a raid on his home and office is appalling,” Dickerson said. He described Ross as “honest and straightforward in all of his business dealings.”

Other friends said Ross is good at what he does but represents his clients’ interests within proper boundaries. No matter how much contact Ross had with Ellis, some are skeptical that any crime occurred.

“The implication is that some clients got contracts because he was aggressive?” said Bob Holmes, a former state legislator who has worked with Ross. “Because someone makes a campaign contribution, that doesn’t mean they’re getting contracts. Having someone’s ear doesn’t mean you win a contract.”

Campbell’s supporters once made similar arguments, even after Ross’ testimony. Still, Houck shrugged off any implication of impropriety in Ross’ dealings with Ellis.

Arousing suspicion, Houck said, is an occupational hazard for anyone in “the influence-peddling business.”