Ferguson Dragged Into Astroturf-Gate

by: blue7thpac

Sat Sep 23, 2006 at 09:30:51 AM EDT

There's been a bit of silliness over at the Tom Kean Jr. campaign this past week.  Xpatriated Texan of Blue Jersey discovered that a Kean Jr. attack on Senator Bob Menendez was patently untrue by unearthing a Jersey Journal article from 1996.  Turns out that Menendez did get ethics committee approval for renting his property to a non-profit group he championed in Congress.  Turns out that Menendez even rented it to them at less than market rate, costing him money.

The Kean Jr. folks were not happy about the truth coming out.  To combat the evidence they started posting comments on Blue Jersey under made up names pretending to be former Democrats and liberals.  Juan Melli -- the founder of Blue Jersey -- caught them by matching the IP address of the commenters to the IP address of Kean Jr. press secreatary Jill Hazelbaker's e-mail account.

That's been a front page newspaper, TV and radio story for a few days.  Ooops.

But Hazelbaker wasn't done making mistakes.  She also tried to paint Ellen Weintraub -- the ethics officer named in the Jersey Journal article as the one who cleared the rental -- as a partisan nut whose word could not be trusted.  Unfortunately, Herb Jackson of the Bergen Record learned that in Weintraub's new job as a Federal Election Commissioner she had backed Kean Jr. in his complaint against Mike Ferguson based on cheating in the 2000 primary election for NJ7's Congressional seat.

For campaign finance geeks who want to read the FEC docs on that dispute (MUR 5024 and 5024R), here's a rundown:

• Weintraub and two other commissioners take Kean's side in 2003.
• Three other FEC commissioners take the opposite position a month later, creating a deadlock that means Kean loses.
• Kean sues, and U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denies the FEC's motion to dismiss the suit. Among the reasons cited are a recent Supreme Court ruling uphold the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
• The court gives the FEC 60 days to take another look at the case, and commission lawyers recommend a finding there was a violation. The Council for Responsible Government, which paid for the borchures, is fined $5,500 and must disclose where it got its money. It turns out it was the group US Term Limits.

And so, Mike Ferguson's own corruption and campaign cheating comes up once again thanks to the incompetence of the Kean Jr. press secretary.  So sad.