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August 24, 2006

Norquist Takes Dirty Money to Local Politics

It looks like we have another crooked Republican hiding behind a Christian label. This time it's Maryland State Sen. Alexander X. Mooney. Mooney has accepted more than $18,000 in contributions from Jack Abramoff and his associates since 1998, and refused to return any of it. Two of Abramoff's associates, Grover Norquist and Edwin Buckham (former Chief of Staff for Tom DeLay), even held fundraisers for Mooney in their homes. Which prompts the question, why would these gentlemen have an interest in a state senator?

Norquist has said his support of TABOR ballot measures is part of his effort to make government spending a vote-moving issue. Additionally, Norquist is increasingly focusing on building state coalitions that will rile up the grassroots and get them to the polls. Clearly, his support for Mooney, who is outspoken on known vote-moving issues, is part of this plan, and likely Mooney isn't the only recipient of his largesse.

Mooney's acceptance of dirty money is bad enough, but surely his Christian constituents would be interested to know that he is also taking a lot of money from sources that I doubt very much they would approve of. Though Mooney has been very outspoken on gay marriage, abortion, gun control and gambling, he has accepted $10,000 from gambling interests, $1,550 from tobacco companies, $3,250 from liquor companies, and significant sums from companies that favor unions and gay rights (some of which was laundered first through Tom DeLay's ARM PAC).

Mooney's predictable response: "What does it matter where the money comes from? What matters is how you vote." Sounds familiar. Like what the TABOR ballot measure backers are saying now that DeLay associate Howard Rich's funding scheme has come out into the open.

Posted by Becky at August 24, 2006 09:31 AM