Monday, August 9, 2010

Was Sensenbrenner Violating Campaign Rules?

Todd Lohenry, of the website "Party of KNOW" (or No or Know-Nothing, if you prefer), has an interesting post up regarding a conversation that allegedly took place between Terri McCormick and Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R- Liechtenstein).

The intent of Lohenry's post is obviously to discredit McCormick, who is running for the honor of running against Congressman Steve Kagan. I don't know much about that race and don't really have much to say in support or against McCormick.

What I do find interesting is the document Lohenry provides for his readers. Said document is supposedly some notes that were transcribed by McCormick, or at least by someone using her computer, which detail the course of their conversation.

The document is dated October 3, 2009, which was a Saturday, which was the date the notes were transcribed. Reading further down Lohenry's post, it shows that the notes were written at 5:50 am on that Saturday morning, but the meeting actually had taken place on October 2, 2009, which was, of course, a Friday. Furthermore, the meeting took place from 10:05 am to 10:35 am that Friday, which is safe to assume it was during work hours.

McCormick also notes that the meeting took place in Sensenbrenner's district Congressional office.

So why are the date, time and place relevant? Well, if you read through the notes you can see that McCormick started talking about her bid to run for the 8th Congressional District seat and Sensenbrenner responds in a very negative way, informing her in no uncertain terms that the NRCC will never support her campaign in any way, shape or form.

Now, I don't know all the ins and outs of election laws, but I do know that it is illegal to be campaigning on the government's time or in a government office.

Since Sensenbrenner was talking about campaign issues (even though not his own) and he was on the clock in his office (albeit the local one), it would appear that this was in violation of the law as I understand it.

Perhaps some political wonk could either tell me I am correct in this, or why I am not.

4 comments:

  1. I am sure the "tea" partiers who want to "take back our government" will be all over this! Wait is that crickets I hear???

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  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  3. After rereading the previous comment, I realized that there were some unfounded, and rather disturbing, allegations in it. I have reproduced the comment here, sans those allegations:

    Where has this gone why is he not being investagated, And seriously he wants you to be FORCED to report anything you see even if it's someone rolling a cig and it may be a joint instead.

    Why not people have been screaming it for years I guess the money really dose talk.

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  4. More Government Scum, just in it for the money.

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