Is the New Republican Party Being Defined in the Public Arena? `This Week` Roundtabl
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Is the New Republican Party Being Defined in the Public Arena? `This Week` Roundtabl - Video
NRCC Withholds Money After New Hampshire Republican Says She Won #39;t Vote for Speaker Boehner
Marilinda Garcia, running for Congress in New Hampshire #39;s 2nd congressional district, says she may not vote for Speaker Boehner to continue as Speaker. Next, the NRCC decides to withhold funds...
By: Erick Erickson
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NRCC Withholds Money After New Hampshire Republican Says She Won't Vote for Speaker Boehner - Video
James Shalleck, the Republican candidate for Montgomery county executive, was recently approached by a woman at a campaign stop who felt compelled to explain why she would never support him.
She said she wouldnt vote for me because of Ted Cruzs position on immigration, he said, referring to the Republican senator from Texas who opposes amnesty for undocumented immigrants.
I said, What do you want from me? Shalleck recalled, his exasperated tone still rich with the intonations of his native New York.
Shalleck, who will face two-term incumbent Isiah Leggett (D) on Nov. 4, has been at the bottom of this mountain before. Since 1994, hes run three times for states attorney and once for judge in a county where registered Democrats have a 3-to-1 advantage over Republicans. The last time a GOP county executive held office was 1978.
Montgomerys more moderate Republicans also suffer from the countys location in Washingtons back yard, where they must contend with what Shalleck calls the echo of positions taken by national party figures such as Cruz.
But Shalleck, 68, relishes his seemingly perennial candidacy. The long odds include Leggetts fundraising edge. Shalleck has $2,400 cash on hand, compared with Leggetts $425,000, according to the most recent state filings.
At times, Shalleck, who spent 12 years as a prosecutor in the Bronx, can sound more like a Democrat than the real ones he debated during the primary season (he ran unopposed in his party).
He talks about spending on the big-vision stuff to give the county a stronger identity: a four-year university, a minor league baseball team, Arena football and maybe a venue that would save families a trip to the District to watch their children graduate from high school.
I had to schlep to the DAR Hall to see my kids graduate, Shalleck told an audience this year. It takes two hours, and you get a $60 parking ticket because youre running late.
The son of a Democratic lawyer, he was a member of that party until 1989, when he moved to Washington to join the Justice Departments antitrust division at the beginning of George H.W. Bushs presidency.
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Shalleck, Republican Montgomery executive candidate, faces uphill battle
Republican governor candidate Bruce Rauner is broadening his attacks on Gov. Pat Quinn to accuse the Democrat of abuse, neglect (and) tragic mismanagement in the deaths of children whose families had previous contact with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
The accusations were made in a new, one-minute Rauner radio ad that contends Quinn administration failures include the deaths of 95 children in which the states child welfare agency had reported having contact with the victims families within the prior year.
The radio commercial comes from a Rauner campaign that has had a heavy television presence, including three TV ads that were introduced last week. On Monday, Quinn launched two new TV ads, including one featuring First Lady Michelle Obama, who is scheduled to campaign with the governor Tuesday.
Rauners radio ad, one of two now airing in Chicago, cites allegations of illegal patronage hiring raised by a state inspector general and federal grand jury probes into a $54.5 million anti-violence grant program Quinn began shortly before the 2010 election.
But the worst part? Quinn isnt just costing us dollars. Hes costing us lives, a female narrator says. Under the direct responsibility of Quinns Department of Children and Family Services, 95 Illinois children died. Abuse, neglect, tragic mismanagement. Ninety-five innocent children who depended on Illinois gone. Forever.
The figure used by the Rauner campaign is a reference to numbers obtained in a joint Sun-Times-WBEZ FM investigation which found from 2011 to 2013 there were at least 95 instances in which DCFS had contact with the child or family within a year of the childs death.
Quinn spokeswoman Brooke Anderson called the ad a false and malicious attempt to smear the governor. She contended Rauner was cynically using for political purposes an agency that intervenes in emergency life and death situations involving at-risk children.
To imply the governor is somehow responsible for the deaths of children in the horrific circumstances that this agency enters into while trying to save lives is despicable and a new low, she said.
Another one-minute Rauner radio ad plays off an earlier TV spot that attacked the combined 100-year service of Democrats Quinn, House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton and imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Quinn countered with his latest TV ads, including one featuring Michelle Obama noting his support for raising the states minimum wage and attacking Rauners suggestion that he would reduce Illinois income tax rates to 2010 levels within four years. Quinn wants to make permanent the states 2011 Democratic-passed income tax hike.
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Rauner radio ad hits Quinn on DCFS deaths
Three Republican central committees in California have agreed to pay fines for laundering money during the 2010 election, the Fair Political Practices Commission announced Monday.
The states political watchdog has proposed fines of $5,000 each for the Yolo County and Santa Clara County Republican central committees for failing to report their role as intermediaries to funnel money from Ann and Charles Johnson an owner of the San Francisco Giants to Damon Dunn, the Republican candidate for secretary of state in 2010.
The FPPC also proposed a $15,000 fine for the Republican Central Committee of Los Angeles County for acting as an intermediary in sending money from Paul Anthony Novelly chief executive of Apex Oil in St. Louis and his family to a 2010 Republican candidate for California Senate, Rabbi Nachum Shifren.
In all three cases, according to the FPPC, the donors had given the maximum allowable contributions to the candidates they supported, but wanted to contribute more. So they worked with campaign consultants to contribute money to the central committees, which in turn donated almost the same amounts to the candidates, the FPPC documents say.
That violates state law because donations to political parties are not supposed to be earmarked for specific candidates. The FPPC has found similar violations in the past involving Republican central committees moving money to support state Sens. Tom Berryhill and Joel Anderson. Its a pattern that likely results from limits California voters put on campaign fundraising when they approved Proposition 34 in 2000. That measure limits the amount donors can contribute to specific candidates, but allows unlimited donations to political parties as long as they are not designated for specific candidates.
In the cases involving Dunn, the secretary of state candidate, the FPPC found that Dunns political consultant Matt Rexroad and political fundraiser Michael Sowers played key roles in orchestrating the contributions from the Johnsons to the central committees, and then on to the Dunn campaign.
The FPPC reviewed emails, text messages and phone records that show how the two men coordinated the plan: Sowers asked the Johnsons adult daughter to support Dunn by contributing to the central committees, and Rexroad communicated with the central committees to ask that the money come back to his client. Rexroad sent an employee to pick up the checks from Johnsons San Mateo office and deliver them to the central committees, an FPPC documents says, and sent an email to the central committees chairmen with instructions on wiring the money to the Dunn campaign.
The Johnsons ended up giving $34,000 to each central committee. The Santa Clara committee later gave $33,000 to Dunns campaign and the Yolo committee gave about $32,300. A third committee that is not being fined by the FPPC the Placer County Republican Central Committee also received a donation from the Johnsons that the FPPC says was targeted to support Dunn. The Placer County group refunded the Johnsons money, calling the transaction tainted, according to an FPPC document.
In an interview Monday, Rexroad said he did nothing wrong by asking the central committees to support his candidate.
You can ask and request, but in the end they get to decide, he said. The central committees chose to give out of their own volition. They could have chosen to give to any candidate they wanted to it was entirely within their control.
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California FPPC suggests money laundering fines for three GOP committees