The Ohio coingate scandal has gone national. not only in the
LA times, but the beltway is now raising significant concerns about the November election.
The LA Times has a nice article that gives those who arent as familiar with coingate a chance to catch up.
But for the substance of this diary, we should turn to our trusted friend, the Toledo Blade, right after the break.
WASHINGTON - What began as questions about Ohio's $50 million venture with a Toledo-area rare-coin dealer has mushroomed in just 10 weeks into a scandal that's echoing through the halls of Congress.
This started a few days ago, with Rep. Marcy Kaptur from Toledo bringing it up.
"What's happening in Ohio is a specific case that we are looking into and monitoring closely," said Aaron McLear, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. "We are taking steps to solve the problems. I don't think it is indicative of anything more."
Well not unless you ignore Tom DeLay, Bob Ney and the rest of the abramhoff crew i guess.
Partisans in Washington argue that a Republican "culture of corruption" extends far beyond Tom Noe and Columbus, reaching all the way to the White House and Capitol Hill.
It is becoming clear that coingate is going to be part of the 2006 corruption narrative.
They say recent revelations about wrongdoing in the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation and its rare-coin investment with Mr. Noe, a prominent Republican campaign contributor, have given new life to Democrats clinging to the belief that last year's election was riddled with corruption in Ohio.
Yes, Tie it together, keep up the pressure, open a second front.
The controversy has Democrats questioning whether the Ohio Republicans who permitted the state's rare-coin investment could have been capable of wrongdoing at the polls last November.
U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Lorain, said his Republican counterparts in Washington and Columbus have left a trail of misdeeds that was highlighted during last year's presidential race. If President Bush collected illegal money in Ohio, Mr. Brown said, it casts some questions about the results of the election.
"When you see one party with this much power, corruption sets in," Mr. Brown said. "I don't know of any state that has seen it this bad.
"People are stunned by the corruption and arrogance of Ohio's Republicans," he said.
Exactly.
That's why some Democratic members of Congress are planning to meet with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean next week to talk about what happened in Ohio during the 2004 presidential election.
Ohio held the keys to the White House last year, deciding the presidential race by a margin of fewer than 120,000 votes.
"I think there should be an investigation of Ohio," said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo), who last week put a statement on the congressional record about Ohio's investment scandal. She said she is hopeful a meeting with Mr. Dean will put Democrats in position to undertake a review of what occurred in her home state.
Dean has been talking about voter supression recently, lost in all the christian kaffuffle. It will be interesting to see where he can take this.
While the President followed a long line of Republican leaders in quickly cleansing their hands of Mr. Noe's money, the RNC remains confident that Mr. Bush won "fair and square" in Ohio and the rest of the country.
"We are confident that we won the election in Ohio," Mr. McLear said. "We welcome anybody who wants to look into that."
Someone ought to tell Ken Blackwell that, he did everything in his power to prevent the recount and investigate the election. It's also hard ot win fair and square when your campaign has benefitted from hundreds of thousands of illegal campaign contributions.
As always, the Kerry Campaign folks need messaging practice, this is weak and poor...
Jim Ruvolo, the chairman of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's Ohio campaign, said allegations that have been raised during the last two months are not enough to change the results of the election. Yet, he said, it is important to get to the bottom of what took place last year.
"I am sure you cannot change the election," Mr. Ruvolo said. "But uncovering it and then working to make sure we have vigorous prosecution so people know there are penalties for this ... we owe it to the voters."
Some Democrats point to Lucas County for examples of concerns in last year's election. Mrs. Noe was chairman of the county Republican Party and chairman of the county Board of Elections.
In April, she resigned from the county elections board amid concern about how the 2004 election was run. The board was completely recast because of concerns about the failure to secure ballots during last year's election, failure to secure poll books after the official canvass, and problems with some absentee ballot forms.
There were also questions about long lines and a lack of voting machines at polls that typically have a large Democratic voter turnout.
"I can't speak for other counties, but I know inside this county when [Mrs. Noe] was in charge, it was chaotic or it was ineptness," Miss Kaptur said. "Something was very sly. I have become very suspicious of what happened."
She added, "There has been no sunshine into what happened on that board."
If there were alleged problems in Lucas County, Democrats say it should not be assumed that there were not concerns elsewhere in Ohio. Thus, an investigation should take place, they say.
They are picking the same theme that I diaried a week ago about this Lucas county Nexus and Bernadette Noe.
Cliff Arnebeck, an attorney and co-chairman of the Alliance for Democracy, said the news of Mr. Noe's coin deal has provided some optimism for people who believe the election was swayed by wrongdoing.
"There's an excitement that we are getting to the bottom of this," said Mr. Arnebeck, who filed lawsuits on behalf of voters after last year's election.
"It is happening at a fairly rapid time frame. It's phenomenal in terms of what has been uncovered. It dramatizes what I think is fair to describe as a culture of corruption," he said.
So now our task is to find a greater nexus between the obvious financial corruptions and pay for play, and the November election. I have spent hours and hours digging for a connection to Diebold, because of what i wrote in this diary.
Joe Kidd, the BOE elections director two years ago, was involved in a messy seperation with his wife. For many months during the evening, when he knew that he didn't want to come home and see his wife, he told her he was at meetings with Diebold, the voting machine company. As word spread of this back to Bernadette, Bernadette began to believe that Joe Kidd was holding secret meetings with Diebold to arrange some sort of kickback from them if they were chosen as the voter machine vendor.
Bernadette took her "evidence" about Joe Kidd to Julia Bates' office, our Lucas County Prosecutor. When the Prosecutor's office approached Joe Kidd, he told the truth about the situation but then told them if Bernadette was after wrongdoing, they should know that he was part of a scheme the year before to launder money to Bush from the Noes.
That set off the chain of events on the federal side in regards to the illegal campaign donations.
So Bernadette and her criminal mind put 2 and 2 together and came up with 5. Now she might be looking at 10 !
The interesting thing to note i think, was that she jumped to a conclusion that Diebold could be buying off Boards of elections to get their voting machines selected. This needs more investigations. Was it just her criminal mind at work, or did she know something we don't ? Or want a cut herself ?
So where are the connections if they exist ? the web is large and complex and I can't do it on my own - the door on this part of the story is cracking open, but it wont stay open unless we can find something new.
For other Coingate resources :
Ohio Watch
Coingate.info
Licking County Pro Active Citizens
Ohio Honest elections