How else to explain this entry among the 2,112 itemized disbursements in the Republican National Committee's most recent monthly report to the Federal Elections Commission:
OLYMPIC NEWS BALTIMORE MD 04/23/2009 MEALS $3.99
So some RNC staffer, or maybe Michael Steele himself, picked up a bag of pretzels or something at one of those news & magazine stores at Baltimore Washington International Airport and got reimbursed.
Soon enough it shows up on the RNC's monthly fundraising and spending disclosure as a payment to Olympic News, which Daily Kos readers know is owned by Michael Steele's confidant and close friend, Sandy Roberts, the same friend to whom he and former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich paid $417,000 in the final days of their 2006 campaign from 4 different state and federal campaign accounts they controlled, as WBAL TV Baltimore's Jayne Miller reported.
Maybe this is just the start. Now that Michael Steele has control of the RNC checkbook, maybe he will pay his pal's newspaper stand another $417,000, one bag of pretzels at a time, over the next 2 years.
There's no evidence that Michael Steele's friend Mr. Roberts was ever in any campaign services business. No other candidate or campaign ever reported paying any money to Mr. Roberts or any business he owned, and neither Mr. Steele nor Mr. Ehrlich ever explained why they paid $417,000 of their donors' money to an inactive corporation owned by Mr. Steele's friend Sandy Roberts.
And getting paid for a business he's not really in seems to be a pattern for this mysterious friend of Michael Steele.....
This same Sandy Roberts is the subject of Baltimore Sun reporter Meredith Cohn's continuing coverage of irregularities during the Ehrlich-Steele administration in the Minority/Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program (read the last 3 paragraphs first). Specifically, Meredith Cohn reported that the Ehrlich-Steele administration fast tracked Mr. Roberts's minority retail business certification even though he never owned, operated, or managed a retail business before (he had a small, home-based on again/off again certified minority wholesale janitorial and hospital supply business).
The Ehrlich/Steele administration approval paved the way for Sandy Roberts to team up with airport retail giant Hudson News so that 6 of their 18 BWI storefronts would qualify as minority owned businesses. State auditors recently reported, not surprisingly, that Hudson News was really running those 6 stores and Sandy Roberts went along for the ride....until last month, when Sandy Roberts and Hudson News promised to make substantial changes to meet the minimum requirements of a bona fide independent minority owned business.
- Steve Lebowitz, Annapolis
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