Lines blur as pollster tries to heal Oxendine-Westmoreland feud

By Aaron Gould Sheinin and Cameron McWhirter

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

It's a bizarre story where commerce, regulatory oversight and politics intersect.

It involves Matt Towery, an Atlanta-based pollster and attorney; John Oxendine, the state's insurance commissioner and a candidate for governor; and a failed insurance company under criminal investigation by Oxendine. All the details aren't clear, but a recent attempt by Towery to end a political feud between Oxendine and U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) has devolved into a baffling situation.

But it also left the state's investigator -- Oxendine -- potentially receiving a personal political favor from the attorney of the man he's investigating.

Towery, the publisher of a Web-based political newsletter, is also an attorney at McKenna Long & Aldridge. For a few short days last week, Towery represented Clark Fain in his battle with Oxendine's office over Fain's failed Southeastern U.S. Insurance Co. Oxendine launched a criminal investigation into Fain's business practices as CEO of the workmen's compensation insurer after a Fulton County judge last year ordered SEUS's assets placed in liquidation under Oxendine's oversight.

Fain, who was CEO of the company, had close ties to state Republicans and was a major contributor to several GOP candidates, including Westmoreland and Oxendine.

Towery, himself a former Republican lawmaker, wrote Monday on his Web site, InsiderAdvantage, that while meeting with Oxendine in the commissioner's office, he realized Oxendine was "obsessed" with recent comments Westmoreland made to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Westmoreland served on an SEUS advisory board before being elected to Congress in 2004. Earlier this month, Westmoreland told the AJC that Oxendine called him in December and promised to try to keep Westmoreland's name out of media coverage of the Fain investigation.

Westmoreland told the newspaper he felt like Oxendine was pressuring him to keep a low profile in the governor's campaign (Westmoreland is backing fellow U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal in the Republican primary). Oxendine said he was simply giving a fellow elected official a heads up that his name had appeared in SEUS documents.

In an interview Monday, Towery said he called Westmoreland from Oxendine's office in an attempt to get the congressman to back off his criticisms of Oxendine. But he said he initiated the call, not Oxendine, and that it had nothing to do with the Fain investigation.

"I was just trying to calm Oxendine down," Towery said. "What good could calling Lynn do to help Fain?"

He said neither he nor Oxendine suggested Oxendine go easy on Fain if Westmoreland backed off.

"No, no it wasn't like that," Towery said. "John just wouldn't shut up about it. He was going crazy. I said, ‘John, I can't get Lynn to change his opinion of you. If he thinks you're a shakedown artist, he thinks you're a shakedown artist.' "

But, Towery said, he decided to call Westmoreland to see whether he could get his friend the congressman "to stop saying it every five minutes if that's what's got you so upset."

Westmoreland, Towery said, agreed.

Towery wrote about the situation on his Web site on Monday under the headline "Boy, Can I Be Stupid ... ." He said he realized it was a mistake to represent Fain before Oxendine's office because it could compromise his work as a pollster for InsiderAvantage and WSB-TV. Towery said what he did was not illegal or unethical, "but in retrospect looked wrong."

He said he recused himself from the case on Saturday.

Fain said Monday that he had no comment.

In a statement to the AJC on Monday, Oxendine said he would not "quibble" with Towery's account of the meeting as presented on Towery's Web site.

"Commissioner Oxendine was present when the call was made," Oxendine spokesman Glenn Allen said. "He did not ask Towery to call."

Westmoreland chief of staff Chip Lake said Monday that Westmoreland did receive a call from Towery last week and that Towery asked the congressman to stop discussing his dispute with Oxendine. Later, Towery admitted to Westmoreland that he had called from Oxendine's office.

"It was strange," Lake said, adding that his boss agreed to no deal of any kind. "It was an unusual call."