Why Is This Man Smiling?

I'll give you 32 million reasons... (Photo courtesy: New York Times)

Wow.

Obama's money

Campaign manager David Plouffe says he's raised $32 million this month.

That would be more than $1 million a day.

Mr. Self Destruct

Rudy, we hardly knew ye... (Photo courtesy New York Times)

Here's the writeup on the Florida primary from the New York Times:

McCain Defeats Romney in Florida Vote

By MICHAEL COOPER and MEGAN THEE

MIAMI — Senator John McCain defeated Mitt Romney on Tuesday to win the delegate-rich Florida primary, solidifying his transformation to the Republican front-runner and dealing a devastating blow to the presidential hopes of Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Republican officials said after Mr. Giuliani’s distant third-place finish that he was likely to endorse Mr. McCain, possibly as early as Wednesday in California. They said the two candidates’ staffs were discussing the logistics of an endorsement.

This information is somewhat dated, since multiple news organizations have confirmed that Giuliani will drop out of the race and endorse McCain in Los Angeles tomorrow before the CNN/LA Times/Politico debate at the Reagan Library. Whether this will be a significant boost or not for McCain remains to be seen, although Huckabee's continued presence in the campaign hurts Mitt Romney more than Giuliani's did to McCain.

According to the most recently available exit poll data from Florida, Huckabee took 259,703 votes in the GOP primary. Romney lost to McCain by just over 95,000 votes, so Huckabee may well have played spoiler to Romney in this race, since they are both fishing in the same electoral pond for social and religious conservatives. Huckabee will probably concentrate his limited resources on social conservatives in midwestern and southern states like Missouri, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee on Super Tuesday next week. Whether he will play spoiler to Romney again remains to be seen, since Romney has more resources and needs to be competitive against McCain in bigger and more expensive states like California and New York.

Also worth reading is the NYT's post-mortem on the Giuliani campaign, which I suspect will be the subject of books, dissertations, and theses for years to come.

Update: The Los Angeles Times has this interesting note on Giuliani's campaign based on the latest campaign finance reports filed with the FEC.

Giuliani's $50-million delegate

The failed campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani can claim one distinction: the worst bang for the buck of any delegate winner in presidential politics history.

The former New York mayor, who dropped his Republican bid for the presidency this week, disclosed Thursday in a filing with the Federal Election Commission that he raised $58.5 million and spent $48.8 million in 2007.

With his donors' money, Giuliani captured a single national delegate, in Nevada. At that rate, it would have taken close to $60 billion in spending to capture the 1,191 delegates needed to win the nomination.

Dan Morain

Debate Fact Check: Obama's PAC Money

About 18 minutes into tonight's debate of the Democratic presidential candidates on MSNBC, Barack Obama said "In terms of how we've been running this campaign, I think what we've seen is I haven't taken money from federal registered lobbyists. We're not taking money from PACs."

A review of his campaign finance numbers for the first quarter of 2007 compiled by the Washington Post shows that he has received $3,050 in PAC money.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: The FEC lists the same set of contributions as "Non-Party (e.g. PACs) or Other Committees"

A review of this section shows 5 separate contributions. Four of them are from congressional campaigns. The other is from Locke Liddell and Sapp LLP PAC, dated Feb. 21, 2007 and worth $1000.00. An image of the form for this contribution can be viewed here.

The Return of Abscam

A few weeks ago, I facetiously suggested that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies open up a field office on Capitol Hill because of all the investigations going on. They might not do that, but the Feds gave a huge hint that they've still got work to do.

FBI willing to go undercover in Congress if necessary
By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The new chief of the FBI's Criminal Division, which is swamped with public corruption cases, says the bureau is ramping up its ability to catch crooked politicians and might run an undercover sting on Congress.

Assistant FBI Director James Burrus called the bureau's public corruption program "a sleeping giant that we've awoken," and predicted the nation will see continued emphasis in that area "for many, many, many years to come."

So much evidence of wrongdoing is surfacing in the nation's capital that Burrus recently committed to adding a fourth 15- to 20-member public corruption squad to the FBI's Washington field office.

In the past year, former Republican Reps. Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney have pleaded guilty to corruption charges. FBI agents are investigating about a dozen other members of Congress, including as many as three senators. The Justice Department also is expected to begin seeking indictments soon after a massive FBI investigation of the Alaska Legislature.

If conditions warrant, Burrus said, he wouldn't balk at urging an undercover sting like the famed Abscam operation in the late 1970s in which a U.S. senator and six House members agreed on camera to take bribes from FBI agents posing as Arab sheikhs.

"We look for those opportunities a lot," Burrus said, using words rarely heard at the bureau over the last quarter century. "I would do it on Capitol Hill. I would do it in any state legislature. ... If we could do an undercover operation, and it would get me better evidence, I'd do it in a second."

The Devil is in the Classified Details

The Associated Press has an interesting story on how convicted former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham used the classified appropriations process in his capacity as a member of the House Intelligence Committee to steer appropriations money for projects of his choice that would "benefit him or his associates."

Here's the basics of the AP story:

An independent investigation has found that imprisoned former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham took advantage of secrecy and badgered congressional aides to help slip items into classified bills that would benefit him and his associates.

The finding comes from Michael Stern, an outside investigator hired by the House Intelligence Committee to look into how Cunningham was able to carry out the scheme. Stern is working with the committee to fix vulnerabilities in the way top-secret legislation is written, said congressional officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the committee still is being briefed on Stern's findings.

Cunningham's case has put a stark spotlight on the oversight of classified - or "black" - budgets. Unlike legislation dealing with social and economic issues, intelligence bills and parts of defense bills are written in private, in the name of national security.

That means it is up to members of Congress and select aides with security clearances to ensure that legislation is appropriate.

Speaking from personal experience at my previous job where on a few occasions I had to go through similar documents and trying to fact check or analyze the data they contain, government budget documents which are available to the public generally tend to be monstrous in size and mind-numbingly dull in scope and detail to begin with. What makes this budget bill different is that anything dealing with the intelligence community budget is classified, because the U.S. government does not want to give any hints to foreign governments or intelligence agencies any ideas about what the CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA, DIA, or other agencies in the U.S. intelligence community alphabet soup might be up to based on how much money they're getting from Congress.

As the AP story points out, pork projects buried in classified budgets are nothing new, citing Senators Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) and Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) as examples. However, given all of the recent controversies involving the practice of earmarking, as well as some of the projects which were going to receive congressional funding (i.e. the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska), it would not be surprising to me if at some point in the future, a massive overhaul of the appropriations and earmarking process will be necessary.

Finally, the article also adds that when dealing with classified budgets the judgment is strictly up to the committee members and a handful of aides who have the appropriate security clearances. Because of this, no outside interest groups (i.e. Citizens Against Government Waste or POGO) or the media can go through it and look for possible evidence of pork projects, wasteful spending, conflicts of interest, or corruption.

The Downward Spiral

On Tuesday, former Christian Coalition organizer Ralph Reed became the first victim of the Jack Abramoff scandal at the ballot box.

According to Rich Lowry at the Corner, in trying to explain his loss Reed's people point the finger directly at John McCain and the press (emphasis is mine):

Cagle v. Reed [Rich Lowry]

Here's the view of what happened from the Reed camp: Once the Abramoff stuff exploded, it was going to be a very tough road for Reed. Glen Bolger did a poll for the campaign in January showing that it was possible for Reed to win, but his negatives were very high and he would have to squeak by. Reed had a choice to make, and decided to stay in the race and try to make it happen. In the end, soft Republicans appear to have broken very strongly against him in the suburbs. There may have been some cross-over Democratic votes in the open primary, but that alone can't account for a 54-46% loss. Reed's connection to the Abramoff stuff had broken back in the summer of 2004, so it couldn't have been predicted that it would be such a huge deal even now. But it was. The Reed camp blames John McCain for playing payback for his 2000 primary defeat with a campaign of leaks, and the press, of course, was happy to pile on. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran dozens and dozens of stories about the scandal. Outside liberal groups might have spent upwards of a quarter-million on the race. The Reed team felt good at the close of the race, but, in the end, they just couldn't scratch it out.

Reed has gone a long way from this:

Time Magazine cover boy in 1995:

The New Hampshire senate, which usually deigns to listen only to would-be Presidents, paid close attention to his message. The ranks of conservative Christians, Reed said, are now "too large, too diverse, too significant to be ignored by either major political party." Not long ago, America's Christian right was dismissed as a group of pasty-faced zealots, led by divisive televangelists like Jerry Falwell, who helped yank the Republican Party so far to the right that moderates were frightened away. But Reed has emerged as the movement's fresh face, the choirboy to the rescue, a born-again Christian with a fine sense of the secular mechanics of American politics. His message, emphasizing such broadly appealing themes as support for tax cuts, has helped make the Christian Coalition one of the most powerful grass-roots organizations in American politics. Its 1.6 million active supporters and $25 million annual budget, up from 500,000 activists and a $14.8 million budget just two years ago, hold a virtual veto on the Republican nominee for President, and will exert an extraordinary influence over who will occupy the Oval Office beginning in 1997.

To this:

(Abramoff is the one furthest to the left wearing the black shirt and baseball cap. Reed is the one to Abramoff's immediate left, wearing khakis and a long sleeve shirt.)
From the Washington Post:

[Abramoff] looked to Reed, the former Christian Coalition leader who operated several consulting companies. Reed has acknowledged receiving as much as $4 million from Abramoff and his associate, Scanlon, to organize grass-roots anti-gambling campaigns in Louisiana and Texas. The money came from casino-rich Indian tribes, including the Coushattas, but Reed said that although he knew of Abramoff's connection to the tribes, he did not know until media accounts surfaced last summer that his fees came from gambling proceeds.

Reed then turned to Dobson to marshal his vast network of evangelicals, Abramoff's e-mails show.

If you thought that arrangement sounded bad, their own words in e-mails obtained by investigators and the press make it sound even worse. Again, from the Washington Post (emphasis is mine):

Among those e-mails was one from Reed to Abramoff in late 1998: "I need to start humping in corporate accounts! . . . I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts." Within months, Abramoff hired him to lobby on behalf of the Mississippi Band of Choctaws, who were seeking to prevent competitors from setting up facilities in nearby Alabama.

In 1999, Reed e-mailed Abramoff after submitting a bill for $120,000 and warning that he would need as much as $300,000 more: "We are opening the bomb bays and holding nothing back."

In 2004, when the casino payments to Reed were disclosed, Reed issued a statement declaring "no direct knowledge of their [Abramoff's law firm's] clients or interests." In 2005, however, Senate investigators released a 1999 e-mail from Abramoff to Reed explicitly citing the client: "It would be really helpful if you could get me invoices [for services performed] as soon as possible so I can get Choctaw to get us checks ASAP."

One of the most damaging e-mails was sent by Abramoff to partner Michael Scanlon, complaining about Reed's billing practices and expenditure claims: "He is a bad version of us! No more money for him." Scanlon and Abramoff have pleaded guilty to defrauding clients.

And finally to this:

(Photo from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

I recommend reading the entire AJC article linked above, but here's a key passage:

Reed often blamed "the liberal media" for focusing on the his dealings with Abramoff, but in fact many evangelical Christians were also disaffected.

Clint Austin of Marietta is a former Reed employee who ran Reed's successful bid to become state Republican Party chairman in 2001. On Monday, Austin, now a state Capitol lobbyist, posted on the Internet an article in which he explained why he would not vote for Reed.

"My reason for abandoning my support of Ralph is simple: Ralph Reed's words and actions do not match up," Austin wrote.

I'd say Tom DeLay was the first political victim of the Abramoff scandal, but he decided to abandon his re-election effort instead of sticking around to run against Nick Lampson. Both Texas state parties are awaiting a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to see whether they will uphold or overturn the ruling by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks earlier this month forcing DeLay back in the race. However, DeLay has additional problems with the ongoing investigation by DA Ronnie Earle in Austin, so his legal and political problems weren't only Abramoff-related.

How this will bode for other Abramoff-tainted lawmakers (i.e. Bob Ney, Conrad Burns) remains to be seen, but since the Washington Post reported the first Abramoff story back in 2004 and kept revealing more about his lobbying scheme, the name Abramoff has become politically radioactive in DC. Whether this will matter to their constituents back home when both men are up for re-election in November, we'll have to keep watching both races as well as any further revelations from Abramoff-related investigations by the government and the media.

For further reference material, check out this section of the Washington Post archiving all of its Abramoff stories, for which they won a Pulitzer Prize.