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He also made some interesting claims about his resume. The one that caught the eye of Campaign Extra! was that he'd been an "investigative reporter" for New York Newsday. We worked at Newsday during all of the New York edition's 10-year run, and were in the NY newsroom for five of them. The name of Stephen Marks didn't ring any bells. It also didn't get any valid hits on a Nexis search of the Newsday data base.
Marks claims "he has also been a press secretary in GOP campaigns (including Jeb Bush's bid for governor in 1994)." But if he was a press spokesman, he must have been a very soft-spoken one, because again there were no Nexis hits for Marks and the Jeb Bush campaign. So then Campaign Extra! tracked down the man who really was Jeb Bush's 1994 press secretary, Florida political consultant Cory Tilley. Here's some of what he told us in an email:
"I have to admit -- it has been 10 years so I guess I could have met Mr. Marks --- but I honestly have no memory of him at all -- and as far as I know he did not work on Governor Bush's 1994 campaign. I was his Press Secretary -- and since we had an unusually small staff -- the only spokesperson." Tilley went on to say it's possible that Marks could have been a county-level spokesman, saying "I am searching for some explanation."
What a loser.