Let He Who is Without Sin…
My Capitol Watchblog colleague, Mike O’Brien, penned a pretty good post this week on the Democrats’ recent attack on financier Tim Durham and his funding of Republican candidates. Mike, reminds our Democratic friends that before they go too far off on the plantation after Durham, they may want to look in the mirror and see if they see the Indiana State Teacher’s Association staring back at them. Here’s Mike’s post…
Democrats Could Use Some Quiet Time
Fine, you win, I’ll talk about Tim Durham. Today, for reasons that defy rational explanation, the Indiana Democratic Party decided it was in their best interests to wade into the Durham mess. Chairman Dan Parker called on Republicans who have received donations from Durham to give the money back. I don’t know who is running the political strategy over there, but they must be on vacation. Indy Star columnist Matt Tully sat down with Parker and has more:
On Wednesday, I met Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker for coffee. He brought a prop: a list of the hundreds of thousands of dollars Durham has contributed in recent years to state Republicans. That includes multiple five-figure donations to Gov. Mitch Daniels and lesser but still large donations to a laundry list of other GOP candidates and organizations. — Indianapolis Star
Parker really out-kicked his coverage on this one. If the standard for returning political contributions is that the contributor is suspected of fraud, Democrats better start writing checks. This week the Indiana State Teachers Association, Democrats’ largest political benefactor, was accused of securities fraud by Secretary of State Todd Rokita after months of state and federal investigations. On Wednesday, Rokita sought to freeze ISTA’s assets.
Tim Durham may have been a big shot in local political circles but the ISTA has been buying Democrat House seats for decades. In the last cycle alone they dumped $1.1 million into the coffers of House Democrats and they’re not doing it for the cause of good government. The ISTA isn’t just another big dollar contributor, they run the agenda. However long Parker’s prop list might have been, it surely falls far short of the tens of millions of dollars that the ISTA has given to Democrats in exchange for killing anything that resembles education reform.
Democrats aren’t exactly winning any awards for clean livin’, not while former party officials are living behind bars and their biggest political contributor has been sharing office space with the FBI for the past six months. Tully said he was surprised that Democrats had been quiet for this long. Given current events, they might want to stop talking.
