This story is GROWING. The New York Daily News blog notes that not only are GOPers pointing fingers at each other but that contributions that raise eyebrows up to one’s hairline are surfacing:
When it rains in politics, it pours, and the Foley scandal is spilling quickly over onto the House Republican Leadership — particularly Tom Reynolds, the Erie County-based chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee who faces his own, serious, challenge from a protectionist maverick Democrat, Jack Davis.
Reynolds is now in something approaching open war with the Speaker of the House amid recriminations over who know what when. (Josh Marshall has running, detailed, partisan-but-fair coverage.)
In that context, a reader emails a piece of information that strikes me as very bad news for Reynolds: He may have given Foley money after he was told of the allegations.
Reynolds’s personal PAC, TOMPAC, wrote Foley a check for $5,000 on May 10, 2006. (You can see the filing here.)
The DN blog quotes an AP article as saying Reynolds found out in the spring.
It gets WORSE for Reynolds and the GOP leadership:
UPDATE: Also: On July 27, 2006, the NRCC, which Reynolds chairs, accepted an unusually large contribution of $100,000 from Foley. Hard to imagine something of that size just slipping past the chairman.
Of course, there could be an explanation (and we are sure we will hear one) for this — but this story is going to go on for a while.
It’s the kind of story editors love because (a) it’s clear some prominent people are trying to keep some things under wraps, (b) reporters can find out what’s under wraps and unwrap it, (c) unlike financial scandals or even war and peace issues everyone understands a sex scandal, (d) this society has very little tolerance in the courts for adults who enable or don’t report any form of child abuse or inappropriate behavior. There are some stories that make readers want to go back to news outlets to find updates; this is one of them. And editors will be all over this one.
If you read the stories, what sticks out is the fact that the Democrat on the committee wasn’t even told about the page’s complaint last year when the Republican leadership knew. That reeks of politics. Why wasn’t the Democrat informed if sufficient steps, warnings, etc were taken and given?
Some GOPers will still find ways to try and dismiss or downplay this but it’s serious stuff. If this was the only thing out there, it wouldn’t be enough to derail the GOP. But you now have a constant picture of a party — and an essentially closed-minded administration — that has almost total power and uses it to sustain itself IN POWER. Independent voters, Democrats and many traditional conservatives will likely continue to be displeased and perhaps they’ll send the powerful GOP establishment a message on Election Day.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.