Coleen is at it again!
This time it is in a fundraising email to supporters. In it she tries to paint Congressman John Kline as tainted because he took "$31,000 from DeLay in campaign contributions". Well let's take a look at that claim, shall we?
If you do a Google search (or Yahoo Search for that matter) on the words Tom DeLay PAC, you find that Mr. DeLay was involved in two PAC's - Texans for a Republican Majority and Americans for a Republican Majority. Both PAC's were run by a man named Jim Ellis who, along with 2 others, was indicted for money laundering at TRMPAC. They took illegal corporate contributions (at TRMPAC) and gave the funds to state wide candidates. That the men indicted were close friends to Congressman DeLay and helped his campaigns can not be denied. ARMPAC was also audited by the FEC (no doubt because of the TRMPAC irregularities and rightly so) and the FEC found that ARMPAC under-reported debts and had their state arm pay debts that were incurred by the federal arm of the PAC. It should be noted that Congressman DeLay's indictment focused on actions taken in state elections and not federal elections. There is no indictment or investigations (other than the FEC audit) for the actions of ARMPAC.
A search of the database at Open Secrets shows no individual contributions from Tom (or Thomas) DeLay to Congressman Kline. If you look at the database for Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions, you see that the Americans for a Republican Majority PAC had contributed $30,000 to Congressman Kline's 3 campaigns for Congress ($10,000 each in 2000, 2002 and 2004). There's a shocker - a PAC dedicated to getting Republican candidates elected contributed money to a Republican candidate - somebody call th FBI! Seriously - here you have a candidate that campaigns on her "ethical decision making" sending out campaign literature that lies about her opponent PAC income and yet she accuses her opponent of being unethical?! $1,000 may not seem like a large amount, but it is yet another false claim made by the Rowley campaign designed to make her opponent look bad. Whether it is lying about the Congressman's votes on relief of gas prices or his stands on sending troops to the border, Ms. Rowley's campaign has not been truthful with the residents of the 2nd District about her opponents record. What is ethical about distorting your opponent's record? If this is Ms. Rowley's idea of "ethical decision making" I think I'll pass.
Another claim in Ms. Rowley's fundraising piece is that Congressman Kline "voted to change the House rules that allowed DeLay to keep his leadership role" (ed - is it so wrong to ask that you refer to someone as "Mr." or by their title? end manners lession) if indicted. Even if that is the case (on a side note I notice how this was not an issue when Representative Jefferson D-LA was videotaped taking bribes...) when the indictment came down, Congressman Kline went on the record as stating that Congressman DeLay must step down for the sake of "the party".
Lastly the fundraising piece says "And as you know, only 34% of the district said they'd re-elect John Kline." This is based on internal polling that was done back in MARCH when no one was really paying that much attention to either candidates or issues. Precinct caucuses had just finished and that was PRIOR to Ms. Rowley's much publicized mis-steps of photoshopping a picture of the Congressman onto a stock photo of Werner Klempler during his days playing Col. Klink on Hogan's Heros and the FBI report that came out stating that Ms. Rowley is also guilty of mishandling the Moussaoui case. More seasoned political voices (like Larry Sabato) contend that the 2nd Congressional District is a relative lock for the incumbent.
I can not, in good faith, address this fundraiser without pointing your attention to the unintentional laugh line of the piece "Kline votes 98% of the time with the Republican establishment". A conservative that votes conservative????? Why that is as unheard of as a liberal voting 98% of the time with other liberals! Who would have thought????
If Ms. Rowley hopes for any chance of taking Congressman Kline's seat, she needs to stop distorting her opponents record and start telling the voters what she will do on such key issues as immigration and the Global War on Terror and how she will pay for her education and health care proposals.
posted by The Lady Logician at 7:02 PM permalink
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