May 29, 2006
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid accepted free ringside tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing.Reid, D-Nev., took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 as he was pressing legislation to increase government oversight of the sport, including the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority.
He defended the gifts, saying they would never influence his position on the bill and was simply trying to learn how his legislation might affect an important home state industry. "Anyone from Nevada would say I'm glad he is there taking care of the state's No. 1 businesses," he told The Associated Press.
"I love the fights anyways, so it wasn't like being punished," added the senator, a former boxer and boxing judge.
So tell me, Senator, how these tickets differ from the golf trips that the Democrats have called part of a "culture of corruption" when Republicans accepted them.
And we cannot, of course, overlook the different courses of action taken by teh two Republicans who accepted tickets.
Two senators who joined Reid for fights with the complimentary tickets took markedly differently steps.Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., insisted on paying $1,400 for the tickets he shared with Reid for a 2004 championship fight. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., accepted free tickets to another fight with Reid but already had recused himself from Reid's federal boxing legislation because his father was an executive for a Las Vegas hotel that hosts fights.
In other words, you took the tickets, McCain paid for them, and Ensign had already taken himself out of the debate becasue of family connections. Whose behavior was most ethical, Senator ?
And whose clients were you meeting with and doing favors for?
In an interview Thursday in his Capitol office, Reid broadly defended his decisions to accept the tickets and to take several actions benefiting disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's clients and partners as they donated to him."I'm not Goodie two shoes. I just feel these events are nothing I did wrong," Reid said.
Reid had separate meetings in June 2003 in his Senate offices with two Abramoff tribal clients and Edward Ayoob, a former staffer who went to work lobbying with Abramoff.
The meetings occurred over a five-day span in which Ayoob also threw a fundraiser for Reid at the firm where Ayoob and Abramoff worked that netted numerous donations from Abramoff's partners, firm and clients.
Reid said he viewed the two official meetings and the fundraiser as a single event. "I think it all was one, the way I look at it," he said.
One of the tribes, the Saginaw Chippewa of Michigan, donated $9,000 to Reid at the fundraiser and the next morning met briefly with Reid and Ayoob at Reid's office to discuss federal programs. Reid and the tribal chairman posed for a picture.
Five days earlier, Reid met with Ayoob and the Sac & Fox tribe of Iowa for about 15 minutes to discuss at least two legislative requests. Reid's office said the senator never acted on those requests.
And strikingly enough, what did they get in return?
A few months after the fundraiser, Reid did sponsor a spending bill that targeted $100,000 to another Abramoff tribe, the Chitimacha of Louisiana, to pay for a soil erosion study Ayoob was lobbying for. Reid said he sponsored the provision because Louisiana lawmakers sent him a letter requesting it.Abramoff, a Republican lobbyist, has pleaded guilty in a widespread corruption probe of Capitol Hill. Reid used that conviction earlier this year to accuse Republicans of fostering a culture of corruption inside Congress.
AP recently reported that Reid also wrote at least four letters favorable to Abramoff's tribal clients around the time Reid collected donations from those clients and Abramoff's partners. Reid has declined to return the donations, unlike other lawmakers, saying his letters were consistent with his beliefs.
Certainly looks like a quid pro quo to me -- and what do Senate rules say about appearances?
Senate ethics rules require senators to avoid even the appearance that any official meetings or actions they took were in any way connected with political donations.
In other words, under Senate rules you are DIRTY! After all, it sure looks like there was a connection between your official actions and the fundraising event and donations. What would you be saying -- indeed, what have you said -- about Republicans in precisely that situation? I think we all know the answer.
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