News in today's Albuquerque Journal, and re-iterated on Patricia Madrid's web site is potentially very damaging to Rep. Heather Wilson (R) - it puts her smack in the middle of the Foley-Predator scandal.
From Patricia Madrid's campaign:
http://www.madridforcongress.com/
According to a news release on Rep. Heather Wilson's official website, she was appointed in May of 2001 to the House Page Board, the organization that oversees the U.S. House of Representatives' page program in which several teenaged boys were participating when disgraced Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) made inappropriate sexual advances toward them.
ABC Nightly News on Sunday reported that as early as 2001, when Wilson was named to the House Page Board, pages were being warned about Foley's inappropriate behavior.
More after the flip
This puts a VERY different context around the $8000 in campaign donations that Foley made to Wilson between 1998 and 2002, some of it while Wilson was directly responsible for oversight of this program. Can you say "Hush Money"?
"We have another case of Heather Wilson refusing to stand up and ask the tough questions," said Heather Brewer, spokeswoman for Attorney General Patricia Madrid, Wilson's opponent. "In 2001, when Heather Wilson was named to the House Page Board, pages were already being warned about the inappropriate conduct of Rep. Mark Foley. But Heather Wilson did nothing to protect teenage boys from this sexual predator. Voters have a right to know: As a member of the House Page Board, why did Heather Wilson choose to do nothing to protect teenage boys from her colleague, Mark Foley?"
Madrid, who has served eight years as New Mexico's Attorney General, founded the state's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, through which she has tracked, prosecuted and put online sexual predators behind bars.
"While Patricia Madrid was in New Mexico keeping our children safe from online sexual predators, it appears that Heather Wilson was in Washington, looking the other way as one of her colleagues made inappropriate advances to the children she was charged with protecting. It is time for a change."
Wilson is now in the tightest race of her life, not just statistically tied, but numerically tied with her challenger, at 44%. This NM-01 district has a very large Hispanic, and hence Catholic, community. If Wilson is tied solidly to this moral scandal, it could act to not only motivate the Democratic base to come out against her, but also suppress the social conservatives she counts on to win. This is one to watch.