BOWLING GREEN, Ohio (TDB) -- Nearly $8,000 in campaign donations flowed from crooked GOP insider Tom Noe, who is now serving federal and state prison sentences, to Republican State Sen. Steve Buehrer, a candidate for a seat in the U.S. House.
Noe has come to symbolize the face of political corruption in Ohio. He has been convicted of stealing from Ohio's $50 million rare coin fund, and also for illegally laundering some $45,000 into President Bush's reelection campaign.
There is more about Noe's crooked activities in this Toledo Blade story from Nov. 20, 2006. Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Thomas Osowik said Noe "cooked the books" in a scheme to cheat the public.
Campaign finance records examined by The Daily Bellwether at the Ohio Secretary of State's office show Noe began writing checks to Buehrer's campaign fund during the 2000 election cycle. He donated $2,500 to Citizens for Buehrer that year. Six other check brought in another $5,479 between 2001-2004.
Records examined by The Bellwether indicate that State Rep. Bob Latta -- Buehrer's opponent in the OH-05 GOP primary -- received just one campaign contribution from Noe, a $750 check. (For some reason, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's Web site has been malfunction today. The links either fail or misdirect. There is a note saying the portal is undergoing maintenance. )
Latta and Buehrer are both conservatives, but Buehrer has been portraying himself as the stronger foe of any efforts to raise taxes, and contends his anti-abortion credentials are superior to Latta's. Buehrer also has backing from the Club for Growth, which is vehemently opposed to any new taxes.
But the Noe contributions may present an opening for Latta -- who might begin to make a case that Buehrer was silent, inactive, or inattentive during the scandals of the Taft years because Buehrer accepted campaign funds from a known crook. Political corruption is an issue that is high on the public's radar, and the eight checks totaling $7,979 from Noe to Buehrer's campaign fund are likely to become a way to dredge up the recent scandals and pin more sins on the jailed fundraiser.
If the SOS site is down, you can always use ohiomoneytree.org.
ReplyDeleteIt has all of the same data and an easy-to-use interface.
For example,
here's a list of contributions made by Noe- grouped by the committee receiving the contribution.
Click on the committee name for detailed transaction info.
Don't be fooled by the Latta attacks. Steve Buehrer is the true Conservative Republican. Steve is about liberty. He's about country. He is about faith. He is about loyalty to our troops on the battlefield. He is about winning the War in Iraq. He is about sending whatever reinforcements and resources our soldiers need to defeat the terrorists or our enemies anywhere they appear on the battlefield. He is about limited government and individual liberty, free, genuinely free, political speech. The freedom to exercise your religion, your private property rights, the right to keep most of what you earn. This is who he is. This is what he believes. These are things that Harry Reid, Tom Harkin, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrats work day and night to diminish. The left is about seizing and keeping power. They are about undermining the traditions and institutions that have made the country great. That would include the Constitution, which they dismiss as a living and breathing document, to be interpreted by activist judges at the behest of liberal trial lawyers. They want the Constitution to bend and shape to accommodate where they happen to be in a given year, in a given month, on a given day.
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