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"Being taken to lunch or dinner isn't a sign of corruption, or, anybody that can be bought with just a meal isn't worth buying."

While that's true, there are strict rules in the House of Representatives regarding this. They're written to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

All House members know these rules.

In the end, it doesn't really matter. Stories like this will cost Harris votes, and that's the real problem. I don't think she could win in any case, but avoiding the appearance of impropriety should be one of GOP legislators' higher priorities. There are plenty of folks looking for reasons to attack them.

I didn't know about the house rule, but I understand it now. I honestly don't even know much about Harris and whether I'd support her or not. I just don't have an opinion of her.

The reason this looks like a cheap shot then is that we don't know what her portion cost, nor how many people there were. Nor do we even know if she *did* kick in for anything over fifty bucks, if it was. There's just a couple of facts that she was there and the total was $2800. Most of the time, the people at the dinner don't see the check. I don't have a hard time believing that she would have had no idea what the meal ended up costing, especially if there were a number of people there.

Again... I'm not jumping to her defense necessarily, but this is pretty obviously just a partisan cheap shot.