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My Left Nutmeg

Shays vs Himes Redux?

by: saramerica

Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 11:39:00 AM EST


Apparently life at his Maryland Shore Dream Home isn't all it was cracked up to be, because Chris Shays seems to really want back into CT politics. So badly he can't decide what to run for. First it was governor.  Now, according to
the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza
, he's contemplating a rematch of his 2008 battle for his old 4th CD seat against Congressman Jim Himes.

Former Connecticut representative Chris Shays (R) is considering a comeback bid for the 4th district seat he lost to Rep. Jim Himes (D) in 2008, according to sources familiar with his thinking. Shays has spoken to several of his former colleagues about the possibility although it's not clear how close he is to making a go/no-go decision. ...In 2004 and 2006 beat back serious and well-financed challenges. But, with President Obama on the top of the ticket in 2008, black turnout in Bridgeport went through the roof and delivered Himes a 51 percent to 48 percent victory...It's not immediately clear whether Shays could clear what is a crowded field that includes a current and former state senator if he decided to run. Should he get into the race, Shays would be the ninth eighth former Republican member of Congress running in 2010 for his old seat.

Given Russo and Debicella's lackluster fundraising, Shays might rally the GOP base. On the other hand, it's going to be pretty hard for a guy who struggled to pay off his outstanding debt because his longtime campaign manager allegedly embezzled the money to run as Mr. Fiscal Responsibility.  

saramerica :: Shays vs Himes Redux?
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When the going gets tough. the tough.... (4.00 / 1)
head for Maryland's eastern shore, purchase mansions on the shoreline, and get cushy do-nothing government jobs.

Interesting how the Republicans think Chris Shays, who couldn't see the corruption and mismanagement going on right under his nose in his own campaign, is the right guy to ferret out corruption in government contracts as a director of the Wartime Contracting Commission.  

And, hey, don't we want him to do for Fairfield County what he did for the CIT Group, which he joined as a member of the board of directors last May?  Oops, just a few months after joining the board CIT Group went belly-up, and taxpayers lost- how much?- $2.3 billion in bailout funds they supplied to the group to keep it afloat?

But what's a few billion in lost tax revenues between friends?  

And perhaps Good ole Chris will explain to the families of the dead and wounded from the Iraq War why and how he avoided the draft when his number came up during the Vietnam War in 1969, and how it is that a conscientious objector could push so hard to send other parents' sons and daughters to war when he thought it was immoral to do so.

And, hey, perhaps we could find out if he ever really apologized to that Capitol police officer he cursed at and whose uniform he grabbed.  Perhaps he could explain to minority voters in this district if he thought he was given preferential treatment because he was white, when African-American congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was prosecuted for something far less extreme.

Maybe our press corps will finally begin to ask him some difficult questions.  Maybe John Danosky at WNPR will ask him to explain in detail how he dodged the draft and why Shays thinks it's not immoral for a conscientious objector to support a war.  Perhaps Ken Dixon will ask him how his involvement with CIT Group, which went belly-up, and his own campaign, which was robbed blind, mean that he's qualified to help run federal finances?  Perhaps Mark Pazniokas will ask Shays how it is that he sat by and proposed no reforms whatsoever for health care while millions more Americans were losing their coverage.  

I don't hold out hope, because none of those reporters ever posed difficult questions to Shays before.  Why would they start now?

But should be interesting....


any connection between debt and running for office? (0.00 / 0)
Can a campaign finance savvy person explain whether current fundraising can be applied to past debts? Can it make it easier to get money from donors toward those past debts?  Does having the ability to influence earmarks once again could enable Shays to get contributions to pay off the debt related to improprieties by his former campaign manager?

I have to ask if he is more easily influenced if he has a big pile of debt to pay down.  Seems to work that way for everyone else.


Not how exactly it works but this quote is kind of telling: (4.00 / 2)
from the New York Times when the Sohn scandal broke:

He has now accumulated more than $200,000 in legal bills, according to Mr. Fox.

Adding to Mr. Shays's problems, Mr. Fox said, is that he cannot solicit money from any donor who gave him the maximum amount allowed during the previous campaign, $4,600 per individual donor.

"I gave serious thought to running again to pay this off," said Mr. Shays, who has kept his campaign running in order to raise money.




The subject of your next column? (0.00 / 0)


[ Parent ]
Might wait to see if he actually declares first (0.00 / 0)
There's just so much crazy sh*t to write about and so few column inches.

[ Parent ]
Not again.... (4.00 / 1)
Shays running again might cause my head to explode ala Scanners,

Can we not be rid of this smarmy, condescending SOB?


[ Parent ]
Apparently Not (0.00 / 0)
With five Smarmy SOBs on the Supreme Court, smarmy seems to be in vogue.

[ Parent ]
A list of Shays' campaign debts here: (0.00 / 0)
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-b...

Note that he owes about $85,000 to Pitney, Day. And about $110,000 to Skadden, Arps. Both mega law firms.

The other big debt is $33,750 to his old fundraiser, Kathleen Pierce.

fwiw.


[ Parent ]
Thanks Scoop! (0.00 / 0)
I was trying to find an article that listed his debts - should have gone straight to the source.  

[ Parent ]
A more detailed explanation from N. Vigdor (0.00 / 0)
It seems pretty fact based.

http://www.ctpost.com/local/ar...

Shays owes $243,439 for an in-house investigation into the alleged misappropriation of $250,000 in political funds by former campaign manager Michael Sohn, according to a Jan. 31 report filed with the Federal Election Commission.[wow-- he spent as much investigating as the guy allegedly took.]

A prospective Republican candidate for governor, Shays said Sohn, who was arrested in December and is awaiting criminal trial in Bridgeport federal court, should foot the bill for both.  "Michael is responsible for restitution of the funds that he embezzled and for paying the legal costs resulting from what he embezzled," said Shays, who lost his seat of 21 years to Democrat Jim Himes.

.[Yes, he should pay up, but often what people -- especially those living beyond their means --  should do and are told to do by the courts is not what they can or do end up doing.  Shays, one assumes, has evaluated his chances on this one.  

VIGDOR VIGNETTE ASIDE: only quibble with the last line is that it was never "his" seat -- it was the Dist. 4 seat that he HELD for 21 years. i.e. there is no entitlement here.]



[ Parent ]
what I wonder (4.00 / 2)
... is where the other $240k went -- if you read the indictment, you'll see that Shays' bank account had $490,000 less than they had claimed. So it seems to me that somebody ducked a very serious charge.

–7.25 / –7.28 | http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tw...

[ Parent ]
 
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