Thursday, July 31, 2008

Remember Katherine Harris?

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com


Sure you do. After she was done with the statewide Presidential vote, she decided to run for Congress, and ended up representing the Florida-13th for two terms.

In 2006, she decided to run for the Senate, and Vern Buchanan (R) mostly self-financed a run against Christine Jennings (D). He “won” by 369 votes. There was an issue of 18,000 “missing” votes, a recount, court cases, and finally a finding that allowed Buchanan to keep the seat.

The 2006 Jennings-Buchanan election actually had input to the 2008 primary season. You may recall that Florida decided to hold their primary a little before the proposed DNC date. The legislation passed the Florida Legislature with support from Florida Democrats. One of the major reasons was that the full bill also included provisions to ensure that all elections have paper trails, to preclude another wholesale theft of 18,000 votes. So here it is, July 2008, and Jennings and Buchanan are having a rematch. I could talk about money, polling and demographics, but why not go straight to the crime?

Vern Buchanan owns car dealerships. According to the Sarasota Herald Tribune:

Two former executives for U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan's auto dealerships said they were pressured to donate to Buchanan's 2006 congressional campaign and were offered cash and gifts as inducements, which would violate federal campaign laws.
They actually filed/are filing civil suits, but the upshot here is that if the allegations are true, we’re talking felony.