The partisan Democratic blogosphere is putting on its best affectations of shock and dismay upon learning that Rhode Island Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee hired the wife of James Tobin, a Republican National Committee who was found guilty of ethics violations.
Shady!
James Tobin was tried and convicted of violating federal elections laws in 2005 for jamming phone lines at key Democratic Party offices on Election Day in 2002. Now, Sen. Lincoln Chafee has paid Tobin’s wife’s company $386,000 in consulting fees!
“We had no idea that Northeast Strategies had any connection to Tobin,†said Steve Hourahan, Chafee’s campaign spokesman. The Northeast Strategies principal is Ellen Hall, Hourahan said.
“Her name is Ellen Hall and we hired Ellen Hall and we know nothing about her connnection to Mr. Tobin. Mr. Tobin has no connection to the Chafee campaign at all.â€
Really? The same address? The same house? You really didn’t know??
Meanwhile, Chafee’s campaign is also having some memory problems, telling the Providence Journal on Monday that they knew nothing about Summers or Tobin, and were happily paying $386k to “Ellen Hall”, which I assume is the maiden name of Jim Tobin’s wife Ellen. The Chafee team needs to get their story straight, because the Washington Post story, just one day earlier, quotes their campaign manager saying the money went to buy expertise from Summers.
Republican memory loss–is it contagious?
No doubt the company was recommended by Linc’s good buddy Ken Mehlman.
WaPo: Chafee “taps” wife of GOP phone ‘fixer’!!
Coming from WaPo (not online yet):
Interesting fact: In its latest filing to the Federal Election Commission, the campaign of Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., lists $386,000 in payments for “consulting services” to a firm called Northeast Strategies LLC, listed on Kenduskeag Avenue in Bangor, Maine.
Tantalizing fact: The same Kenduskeag Avenue address is home to James Tobin, a former regional official of the Republican National Committee.
Eyebrow-raising fact: James Tobin was found guilty last year of criminally violating federal elections law, having participated in a scheme by New Hampshire Republicans to jam Democratic get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002.
That’s just a sampler, but it’s a pretty representative one. The idea is that since James Tobin has been convicted in a phone-jamming scheme that may have thrown the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election, his wife should be unable to work in her career as a political consultant.
Let me boil that down: partisan Democratic Party bloggers are arguing that the guilt of a husband should be visited upon the husband’s wife.
You know, if I want parlor dramatics about men’s honor and women’s shame, I can read Jane Austen. She wrote in 19th century aristocratic England, which is exactly where this sort of pathetically opportunistic, unbelievably antiquated sort of attack belongs.
Like outing someone as a CIA agent because her husband didn’t fabricate WMD evidence?
Yep, kind of like that.
James Tobin’s wife does not have and has never in the past had any “career as a political consultant.”
The idea that she has suddenly acquired such a career, and become so good at it that she’s already worth a third of a million dollars to Lincoln Chafee, is pretty ludicrous. The idea that the RNC used Chafee’s campaign to funnel continuing hush money to James Tobin seems much more likely.
The Washington Post and the Providence Journal give conflicting accounts of Ellen Tobin’s role in Northeast Strategies. Neither one suggests that she is working as a political consultant. I’m amazed that the Providence Journal didn’t push further in asking Chafee’s campaign why their story of payments to Northeast Strategies was so different from what they said to the Washington Post, just one day previously.
Well, she’s working in it, Betsy Devine. I leave it to you to decide whether someone who’s working in the field of political consulting has a career in political consulting.
Look at the position you’re putting yourself in in order to push a partisan agenda.