Posted on 02/14/2012 8:54:29 PM PST by Red Steel
Newt Gingrich spent more than 30 years building relationships in Washington, but relatively few of his old colleagues in town have ponied up for him.
His campaign reported pulling in just $278,000 from the Washington metro area last year — a drop in the bucket compared with the $2.5 million raised in Washington by his chief rival, Mitt Romney, who has spent little time there. Those numbers, compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, are for checks of more than $200.
Gingrich’s weak showing in Washington is not surprising to many of the former Hill staff, lobbyists and members of Congress who say his behavior has rankled colleagues along the way in his 20 years in the House and 12 years in Washington consulting.
And those personal clashes aren’t helping him overcome Romney, a candidate whose fundraising draws heavily on old friends in the banking world, supporters from his days as Massachusetts governor, and elsewhere.
“I’m not sure [Gingrich] ever had a lot of friends here, and I’m not sure he cared, because he came here to accomplish a purpose, not to make buddies,” said Ken Kies, an influential tax lobbyist and a Gingrich donor. “Newt led a revolution, so that tends to leave bodies on the floor.”
Only a smattering of Gingrich’s former colleagues have endorsed him or given him money from their political action committees or leadership committees. And unlike Romney, Newt hasn’t reported any lobbyist bundlers bringing in checks of $50,000 or more — which candidates are required to disclose. In the last three months of 2011, Romney reported 14 lobbyist bundlers raising $1.2 million for the campaign.
Gingrich “has always been somewhat of a polarizing figure within the party,” said Jeff MacKinnon, a lobbyist and former aide to Texas Rep. Joe Barton, adding that the former speaker hasn’t done much to retain his ties to the Washington establishment.
“I think that when he left in ’98, that he really didn’t cultivate a team, he really didn’t cultivate any of his old contacts,” said MacKinnon, an early supporter of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential candidacy.
Even some of Gingrich’s former allies have turned against him.
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), a Gingrich leadership partner-turned-rival, said last week that Gingrich won’t have another comeback, and he feels bad for his former colleague. “I think he’s digressed taking a second-rate campaign into a first-rate vendetta,” Armey said of Gingrich’s attacks on GOP front-runner Mitt Romney.
Another hurdle for Gingrich’s in-town fundraising: Washington likes to put its money on a winner — which is widely perceived to be Romney.
However, I doubt the Politico meant it this way. LoL.
I wonder how much they will be giving Santorum in the next few weeks?
Following the money trail should start to get interesting...
LOL! red flag! the candidate that DC endorses is the candidate we dont want to win! establishment rinos that want to maintain their “morbid” grip on DC (as Newt said) and the ones that want to destroy Newt as they see him as a threat to their comfy power zone.
Many younger Republicans and conservatives do not remember why the GOP-e, the media, the left, and Mitt Romney, and the Washington crowd, even Santorum, dislike Gingrich so much, he was one of the greatest conservatives in our history.
To do what Gingrich accomplished, makes you someone that they all have to destroy, and they would sell their souls to keep him from gaining the White House where he could rip into the government machine again.
We are SIXTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS IN DEBT. It is because of corrupt politicians who use pay-to-play. The TEA Party wants to change Washington, D.C. So does Newt Gingrich, which is why his former colleagues hate his guts - no more gravy train!
SANTORUM SURGE BRINGS ETHICS QUESTIONS
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/santorum-surge-brings-ethics-questions/story?id=15287424
By MATTHEW MOSK (@mattmosk) and BRIAN ROSS (@brianross)
Jan. 4, 2012
Rick Santorum’s powerful finish in the Iowa caucus is bringing fresh attention to his tenure in Congress, including ethics questions that dogged him about a preferred mortgage he received from a bank run by campaign donors, and federal funds that went to a real estate developer who backed his charity.
One of the top donors to Santorum’s charity was also the beneficiary of an $8 million Santorum-sponsored federal earmark, according to published reports.
Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who filed an ethics complaint against Santorum in 2006 on behalf of a watchdog group, said her organization’s website received a tidal wave of visitors in the past 24 hours, and in an interview she said she believes people will discover that the GOP presidential contender is “hardly the moral paragon he purports to be.”
“There were several instances in which Santorum appeared to have taken campaign contributions in direct exchange for legislative assistance,” said Sloan, whose organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), spent months investigating Santorum’s activities while he was in office. “He violated Senate gift rules by accepting a mortgage from a bank in which he had no interest and which otherwise made loans only to its own investors.”
Santorum has rarely responded to such attacks, but at one point he wrote a letter to a Philadelphia newspaper criticizing the ethics complaints as a series of “disingenuous innuendo and half-truths.” The Senate Committee on Ethics never responded to CREW’s complaint, and the two-term senator left Congress in 2007 after losing a reelection bid. A Santorum campaign spokesman has not yet responded to phone messages and email requests for comment.
For months, Santorum’s record and background have escaped presidential-caliber scrutiny from rivals and reporters because he never appeared to have traction with voters in the early Republican contests. But as Santorum’s GOP rivals have learned, the national spotlight can be searing. Questions about Newt Gingrich’s consulting work for Fannie Mae surfaced in attack ads against him. Herman Cain bowed out of the race after reports of sexual harassment complaints dogged him for weeks. If the pattern holds true as the winnowed GOP field heads from Iowa down the rural roads of New Hampshire, Santorum will be the latest to undergo intensified scrutiny from rival campaigns and from the national media.
Perhaps the most jarring detail from his tenure in office is the unorthodox $500,000 mortgage that Santorum and his wife secured on the home in rural Virginia they had purchased for $643,361. According to a series of reports in the Philadelphia Daily News, the mortgage came from Philadelphia Trust Company, a fledgling private bank catering to “affluent investors and institutions” whose officers had contributed $24,000 to Santorum’s political action committees and re-election campaign.
In advertising, the lender said it only offered its preferred rates to well-heeled borrowers who also used their investment services. But Santorum’s public disclosure forms showed he did not have the required minimum $250,000 in liquid assets and was not an investor with Philadelphia Trust. His ability to secure the five-year loan led Sloan to file a complaint under a Senate ethics rule that specifically prohibits members from accepting a loan on terms not available to members of the general public. At the time, a Santorum spokeswoman told the Daily News that the mortgage terms were set at “market rates,” but did not provide further comment.
After leaving Congress in 2007, Santorum sold the house for $850,000.
SANTORUM CHARITY BACKER GOT FEDERAL EARMARK
The other issue that captivated Santorum critics involved a non-profit charity called Operation Good Neighbor. Santorum founded the organization to “illustrate compassionate conservatism” but did not take a formal role in its day-to-day operations. The charity was run by his campaign staffers. It operated out of the same building as his campaign headquarters. And its board included several top Washington, D.C. lobbyists who had clients with millions of dollars in business before the U.S. Senate, according to a 2006 report by WTAE, the ABC News affiliate in Pittsburgh.
The chairman of Operation Good Neighbor was Michael O’Neill, CEO of Preferred Real Estate. The company was involved in a waterfront development in Chester, Pa., that, with Santorum’s help, benefitted from more than $8 million in federal grants, according to local reports.
O’Neill told ABC News that accusations suggesting the charity work and his development were connected were “crazy.”
“My answer is absolutely not,” said O’Neill, who is now out of the real estate business. “I was never told, ‘If you do this, we’ll help with that.’ They were completely unrelated.”
O’Neill said Santorum was a figurehead with the charity and that the senator derived no benefit from the work the charity performed — doling out contributions to small groups around the state. “He was proud of the work of the charity,” O’Neill said. “Rick helped bring exposure, but other than that, he didn’t get anything out of it.”
O’Neill also said the former senator should be proud of the waterfront development, which he says has helped deliver 2,000 jobs to downtown Chester, where there is now a soccer stadium, an office building, and a casino.
Santorum also defended the federal grants in a letter to the Philadelphia Daily News, saying his efforts to win federal money for O’Neill’s waterfront development represented “a prime example of how, when used appropriately, earmarks can be beneficial.”
“When Preferred Real Estate became interested in investing in the region, specifically in the revitalization of a blighted former generating plant, I was ecstatic — this was exactly the type of project that could kick off a full-scale economic rebirth and help combat poverty,” he wrote. “So, working with the city, I helped bring federal money to improve access to the riverfront, renovating roads like Route 291 and Highland Avenue, as well as to better the environment of the riverfront, making it a more attractive place for Pennsylvanians to work and live.”
O’Neill has not committed to supporting Santorum’s presidential bid, saying he is waiting to see if Santorum can focus on more mainstream economic issues, rather than social issues.
“If he doesn’t win it won’t be because of his ethics,” O’Neill told ABC News. “What’s going to kill him is this country wants someone down the middle.”
Note: Santorum’s charity, “Operation Good Neighbor” (2001-07), doled out just 36% of income as grants, far less than the 75% usual for such causes. It can only be coincidence the charity which spent most of its money on lobbyists, aides and fundraisers closed after he was defeated for reelection. It was never registered with the State of Pennsylvania as required by law.
“Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), a Gingrich leadership partner-turned-rival, said last week that Gingrich won’t have another comeback, and he feels bad for his former colleague. “I think he’s digressed taking a second-rate campaign into a first-rate vendetta,” Armey said of Gingrich’s attacks on GOP front-runner Mitt Romney. “
I’ve been critical of Newt lately but this really bothers me. If it wasn’t for Newt, Armey would have been just another congressman languishing under a Democrat House majority. Show some gratitude!
“Newt led a revolution, so that tends to leave bodies on the floor.”
And he will do the same again beginning in 2012 when he makes it to the White House. If we really want change in government, Newt is the one to do it, period. So if the GOP establishment won’t contribute to his campaign, then it is up to We The People.
I expect the later.
Well I've read on various sites certain ones are "meeting" with him. but what's more interesting is seeing Democrates, like with Romney, wanting Santorum to run over that of Newt......as if we wouldn't understand why they would...LOL.
"“I’m not sure [Gingrich] ever had a lot of friends here, and I’m not sure he cared, because he came here to accomplish a purpose, not to make buddies,” said Ken Kies, an influential tax lobbyist and a Gingrich donor. “Newt led a revolution, so that tends to leave bodies on the floor.”
Perfect. If I made a list of the qualities I want in the next President of the United States, this would truly be number one on my list. Bodies on the floor and he doesn't care. Exactly as Sarah Palin has said many times, the only thing that will turn this ship around is "sudden and relentless reform."
Bump!
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