Ethics probe could deal losing hand to Nevada Democrat

Reuters ^ | August 7, 2012 | Patricia Zengerle

[Zakeet]

Harry Reid's future as U.S. Senate majority leader may hinge on whether fellow Nevada Democrat Shelley Berkley can survive an ethics probe involving her kidney doctor husband's businesses.

The House of Representatives Ethics Committee announced in July it was investigating Berkley, a seven-term congresswoman, over whether some of her actions as a legislator were meant to benefit her husband financially.

The news comes at a bad time for Berkley, who is locked in one of the country's closest Senate races against Dean Heller, even before news of the ethics probe. Polls since have shown her trailing the Republican ahead of the November 6 election.

[Snip]

Berkley is known as a tireless campaigner, but she is not well-known across Nevada and risks having the ethics probe being the main reason voters know her outside of her Las Vegas-area district.

"If that's the first and the last thing people say about Shelley Berkley, she's in trouble," said Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada in Reno. "She certainly has some major damage control to do."

[Snip]

In a case stemming from a September 2011 article in The New York Times, Berkley is accused of saving a Las Vegas kidney transplant center, which benefited her husband, a kidney specialist who owns a string of dialysis centers.

But investigators are also interested in how she introduced legislation and wrote letters to regulators on federal healthcare reimbursements that benefited her husband's businesses.

Berkley has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the case as frivolous, contending that she was working for the residents of her district when she saved the center.

[Zakeet]

You Right Wing Nuts need to realize that it's not corruption when we do it!

[skinkinthegrass]

"You Right Wing Nuts need to realize that it's not corruption when we do it!"
..needs to be repeated as often as possible.

[Portcall24]

I heard she didn’t pay any taxes for ten years. And I think it’s true until she makes public all of those returns.

[delcopatriot]

“Harry Reid’s future as U.S. Senate majority leader may hinge on whether fellow Nevada Democrat Shelley Berkley can survive an ethics probe...”

Survive an ethics probe? Uh, do you mean like that probe which resulted in the congressional ‘censure’ given to national disgrace Charlie Rangel?

[pops88]

“He is a bonafide conservative....”

I wrote him twice on issues and was actually impressed with the responses I got. They weren’t the usual blah, blah thanks for writing crap.

[pops88]

“I like gov representatives that actually vote as representative of their voting populations instead of their own interests first.”

I got voted in as a school representative when I was in nursing school. I and another woman were elected because we were pretty much the only ones that wanted it. The first vote was over changing the library hours and closing the library in the evening, the only time nursing students could use it. The vote was the instructors first, my peer, and last me. My peer acquiesced, completely caving into the situation, to the “hospital doesn’t have the money and I’m siding with all the instructors and hospital.” Honestly, it’s one of the proudest moments of my life. I stood up before all of them and said I’d been chosen to be the voice of the students. It wasn’t my opinion, I had no right to give my opinion, and was there only to speak the students’ voice. Guess I have a little patriot being a Mayflower descendant. I guess I drank the patriot Kool-aide that’s laughed at in D.C.