Democrats are hoping to make some of the oily scandal swirling around Alaska’s Ted Stevens stick to his fellow Republican Sen. Gordon Smith.
Stevens, 84, who has been in the Senate since 1968 and is the longest-serving Republican senator in US history, was indicted yesterday on seven felony counts accusing him of failing to disclose more than $250,000 worth of gifts from the VECO Oil Corp., an oil field contractor, including a Land Rover and extensive renovations to his house. Stevens says he did nothing wrong and intends to fight the charges.
The Jeff Merkley campaign immediately demanded that Smith give away the “tainted” money the Oregon senator received from Stevens’ Northern Lights PAC, and Smith’s campaign promptly announced it would give the $10,000 Smith got from the PAC in 2007 to an unspecified charity or charities. But Merkley is insisting Smith should give away the entire $39,000 Smith has gotten from Stevens’ PAC over the years.
And there’s another Smith-Stevens connection: Britten Chase of politicker.com did some digging in Federal Elections Commission records and discovered that Smith’s PAC, Impact America, gave $10,000 in campaign money to Stevens on June 27, 2007 – which was 20 days after Stevens admitted to the Washington Post that he was being investigated by the FBI.
“Calls to Smith’s campaign were not immediately returned,” Chase writes.
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 6, 2008.
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Garbage Journalism!!! Guilt by Association!
Just reporting what’s going on in the Senate campaign, Jed.
But do you really think it was smart for Smith’s PAC to give money to Stevens AFTER it was known he was being investigated by the FBI? In addition to which, Stevens’ corruption has been notorious for many years. But he and Smith are members of the same club and they support each other.
Then why don’t you report on every politician who may have a contact with persons of dubious means? You could probably do a 1000 page edition on all politicians. You may start with your beloved Obama.
Jed: I only write this blog, not the whole Source, and I try to find items that have a local or at least state angle. That means I don’t write posts about the presidential race unless they have some local angle, e.g. how much people in Bend have given to the presidential candidates.
Fine stuff, but why bother? The Dems are too incompetent for it to matter a whit in the fall “contest.” Sigh. I guess that’s what they mean by balance of power.