Democrat ads attack GOP over scandal

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 6, 9:19 PM ET

WASHINGTON - More Democrats went on the attack Friday with campaign ads linking Republican candidates to the Mark Foley House page scandal while GOP candidates moved to distance themselves from embattled Speaker
Dennis Hastert' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Dennis Hastert.

On Saturday, Democrat Patty Wetterling, a candidate for an open House seat in Minnesota, will continue the attack in the Democratic response to
President Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President Bush's weekly radio address as the party looks to reap political gains in coming midterm elections.

"Foley sent obvious predatory signals, received loud and clear by members of congressional leadership, who swept them under the rug to protect their political power," Wetterling said in the prerecorded address. "We must hold accountable all those complicit in allowing this victimization to happen."

Republican New Jersey Senate candidate Tom Kean Jr. Friday became the first major GOP candidate to call for Hastert to resign, while additional campaign appearances by Hastert for House GOP candidates got canceled. Hastert has come under heavy attack within his party's rank and file for damage inflicted on the party just weeks before the Nov. 7 elections.
"Hastert should resign as speaker," Kean said. "He is the head of the institution and this happened on his watch."

Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a Republican write-in candidate in the race to replace
Tom DeLay' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Tom DeLay in Texas, decided not to pursue plans to invite Hastert to raise money for her campaign after the Foley scandal broke.
"We just made a decision not to have" a fundraiser with Hastert, said Sekula-Gibbs' campaign manager, Lisa Diamond.
Democrats stepped up their attacks.

"What is going on in Washington? ... Deborah Pryce's friend Mark Foley is caught using his position to take advantage of 16-year-old pages. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert looked the other way," says an ad for Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy, challenging seven-term Rep. Deborah Pryce (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, the No. 4 Republican in the House in a particularly competitive race.

And in culturally conservative southern Indiana, former Democratic Rep. Baron Hill (news, bio, voting record) took to the airwaves Friday with an ad attacking freshman Republican Mike Sodrel for taking thousands of dollars in donations from House GOP leaders, "who knew about but did nothing to stop sexual predator congressman Foley."

At the same time, Hastert canceled plans to raise money for Sodrel on Tuesday.
Earlier, Rep. Ron Lewis (news, bio, voting record), R-Ky., a Baptist preacher and social conservative, canceled plans for a fundraiser with Hastert, who also dropped an appearance with Ohio GOP candidate Joy Padgett, who is in an uphill race to replace the disgraced Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record).

The nonstop news cycles for over a week have been filled with details of Foley's lurid messages to former pages and accusations by former top Foley staff aide Kirk Fordham that top GOP aides, including some in Hastert's office, knew about Foley's problems and the issue of the pages years ago.

But with no significant developments Friday, GOP strategists hoped the party could catch its breath and gain traction on issues like lower gas prices, the peaking stock market and the economy. Great skittishness remained about unforeseen developments in the Foley saga, nevertheless.

Democrats are increasingly optimistic that they will retake the House and possibly even the Senate. Even a prominent Senate Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, seemed pessimistic about his party keeping its hold on the House.
"It's happened in the past that we've had divided government in terms of the House and Senate," Cornyn said. "I'm sure we'll do our best to work together to try to address the nation's problems."

What Did Sherri know and when did she know it?

Mark E. Towner, The Spyglass:

The current flap going on in Washington is when did the GOP Leadership know about the pervert Foley, and what did they do about it. The same case can be made here in the County Clerks office. The following is just the tip of the iceberg of the activities that was happening under Sherrie's watch. We had a corrupt auditor and the GOP replaced him. Where is the moral outrage from Rob Miller and the band down at the Utah Democratic HQ....

http://www.oppositionnews.com/sherrie/sherrie.php



The campaign has just now begun, and the gloves are comming off Sherrie.

Wannabe Alienated Establishment said...
I am not the "anonymous" who posted the preceding link to the Carrie Dickson campaign website, nor am I responding to it as part of a contrived and coordinated stunt. However, I must disclose that I am in complete sympathy with its apparent purposes.I have read several of the newspaper articles listed under the "News about Sherrie Swensen" link before. One of them, however, contains a quote that hits me everytime I read it. I think it is very telling:"It's not just the activities of Nick Floros that make me mad," said Democratic County Councilman Jim Bradley. "What really makes me angry is that he got away with it for years. It may be that the good ol' boy network protected him." ("Cronyism is hinted in sealed sex probe - Harassment allegation: Some say a former employee is being protected by his colleagues." Christopher Smart, Salt Lake Tribune, December 18, 2004)Firstly, I am impressed with the integrity of Democrat Jim Bradley in addressing the corruption of fellow Democrat Nick Floros and the "good ol' boy network" that protected him.I think most of us political junkies have a pretty good idea of who he is talking about when he refers to a certain "good ol' boy network." (Democrat insiders, David Yocum, Randy Horiuchi, Joe Hatch, and Sherrie Swensen come to mind.) The fact that Bradley would call them out is impressive. Some things are more important than party affiliation and he seems to get it. God bless him.Secondly, I am frustrated with the lack of quality journalistic coverage of county government issues and races. Because of this defficiency, the average voter in our community has no idea of who they're voting for when they walk into the booth on election day.Yes, the press was there to cover David Yocum's prosecuting of Nancy Workman when she used county funds to subsidize the services of an employee for her daughter at the Boys and Girls Club. (She, of course, was later exonerated of any criminal wrong doing.) But, where were they when David Yocum allegedly used his office to provide official favors for his son?There have been allegations that David Yocum made his son's recent DUI arrest quietly go away. This is the same son, Jason Yocum, who took Nick Floros' place as Sherrie Swensen's chief deputy. If this "good ol boy network" that Jim Bradley refers to really does exist, then why doesn't Salt Lake's media cover it?If they did, maybe the voters could provide a little housecleaning this year. Goodness know that it is far overdue.

4:59 PM

ICEBERG AHEAD Captain Hastert....

by Rebecca Sinderbrand

ICEBERG AHEAD?: This town is full of gloomy Republicans these days; on my way down H Street a couple of hours after the Hastert press conference, I ran into one of them, a young veteran of half a dozen races since high school, including the last Bush campaign. He's been biding his time till 2008 in the lucrative lobbying-industrial complex over on K Street ("Gotta stop renting someday," he says.) I asked him: in his opinion, would congressional leadership changes now could make a difference for Republican prospects this fall? "Sure," he said. "Like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic probably made for a smaller splash."
Dennis Hastert may have thought his Thursday statement struck the perfect note of stalwart defiance -- but a little something may have gotten lost in the delivery. Because what Republicans actually heard, according to this GOP operative, was something along the lines of: "OK, everybody. On my mark... time to panic!" (Apparently, FOX News picked up on the message, too.) —Rebecca Sinderbrand 9:57 AM Permalink Trackbacks Comments (0)

HASTERT'S Bonanza, where's little Joe

Mark E. Towner, The Spyglass, from just a few minutes ago....

October 7, 2006

HASTERT'S BONANZA....I made a brief, snarky reference to this a couple of days ago, but Norman Ornstein and Scott Lilly give Dennis Hastert's shady real estate dealings the attention they deserve in the New Republic today.

Here's the nickel summary: In 2002 Hastert bought some land for a house along with some adjoining fields. He paid about $5,200 per acre for the fields.

Eighteen months later, he formed a land trust with a couple of local Republican politicos. The trust bought 69 acres of land adjacent to Hastert's for about $15,000 per acre (it was nearer a road and therefore more valuable) and Hastert then added 69 acres of his own land to the trust. Although his 69 acres had been worth only $5,200 per acre a year and a half earlier, the trust valued his land at the same $15,000 per acre as the new land, three times its original price. Sweet, huh?

Then, Dennis Hastert decided to enter the earmark hall of fame. A highway bill was wending its way through Congress at the time, and Hastert took a special interest in it:

There was no better object lesson in the case against earmarks than the Prairie Parkway Corridor, pushed by none other than Denny Hastert. This new highway, designed to connect the counties west of Chicago to the metropolis itself, had neither the support of the public nor the Illinois Department of Transportation....But the Prairie Parkway did offer one important convenience: It was located just over a mile from the property owned by Hastert's trust.

....In December of 2005, four months after the signing of the new Federal Highway Bill containing the $207 million inserted by Hastert for construction of the nearby Prairie Parkway, the 138 acres held by the trust were sold to a developer as part of planned 1600 home housing development. The trust received $4,989,000 or $36,152 an acre for the parcel of which 62.5 percent or $3,118,000 went to Hastert. Klatt and Ingemunson also did well. Their profit equaled 144 percent of their original investment. Hastert, however, received six times what he had paid for his investment, a profit equal to 500 percent of his original investment.
What's more, Hastert still has over a hundred acres left from the parcel he originally bought in 2002. That land is worth double, or maybe more than double, what he originally paid for it. Ornstein and Lilly finish up with this observation:

The speaker hasn't exactly helped his case with his accounts of the transaction. His office has, for instance, described the Prairie Parkway as located over five miles from his property. But U.S. Geological Survey aerial photographs clearly show it to be about four miles closer than that.
We cannot say at this juncture whether the actions taken by the speaker are illegal. We can say that they do not meet the standards we expect — or should expect — from a member of Congress. And they certainly do not meet the standards we expect from the speaker of the House.

No, they don't.—Kevin Drum 1:08 AM Permalink Trackbacks Comments (7)