Posts published in April 2010

Remember those Family circus cartoons showing a broken vase on the floor and a frantic-looking toddler telling mom: "It wasn't me! It was Mr. Nobody" - while the ghost of a mysterious Mr. Nobody scampers past . . .

This being campaign season, well, here we are in Facebook from the Vaughn Ward congressional campaign: "Over the last few days the liberal media has begun attacking us. Please donate today to ensure the we have the resources to combat these liberal attacks. A $5 dollar donation goes a long way in helping us fight the liberal media."

Liberal, liberal, liberal: One per sentence. A piker (Kevin Richert notwithstanding): Surely Ward can up his booga-booga rate to two per sentence next time. There is a problem here: Since Ward is in a competitive primary election, the beneficiary of his troubles would be another Republican candidate, Raul Labrador, who's more or less about as conservative as he is. And, anyone complaining that their attackers are a pack of liberals might want to pause at least before implicitly including Dennis Mansfield, wo has aggressively seized on most of these points, in the group.

What's really happened here is poor campaign management: Most likely, a conclusion months ago on someone's part that uncomfortable stuff could simply be closeted until after the election, with the result that items easily addressable earlier have turned into political trouble later.

Sooner or later, someone was going to ask and make public where the Ward household income was coming from, since Ward - who isn't independently wealthy - is spending the year as a full-time candidate. In many a campaign the opposition would have raised the question long ago. (The answer is Ward's wife, who works for the financial entity Fannie Mae.) From one source or another (in this case, the local newspaper), sooner or later, the question was headed their way. A smarter campaign would have made it visibly public, put it up on their web site, months ago, giving it their own spin.

Property taxes (in Valley County) overdue? Not a huge deal, in one sense. The taxes have apparently been paid since the report came out, the campaign said. But why was this not vetted? Why didn't someone check to see if the candidate's taxes were all paid up?

Overuse of Marine imagery without a disclaimer that the military wasn't supporting the candidate? The rules are standard and candidates all over the country deal with them; did the campaign not check the requirements?

A borrowed truck in Ward's "truck" TV commercial? Wouldn't have been a problem had they, in announcing the ad, snuck in a quick word of thanks to the vehicle's owner in the press release or commercial, instead of uncomfortably trying to explain away the pickup's real ownership later.

So on it has gone in the last few weeks: This isn't gotcha stuff, this is campaign management 101. None of these Ward problems in recent weeks were massive issues inherently, but they became bigger because they blew up in the end game, which is what unaddressed political issues, even picayune ones, tend to do.

One point relating to the just-signed Arizona law on illegal immigrants that almost everyone ought to be able to agree on, maybe the only point, is this: Its impact is extremely likely to spread far beyond the borders of Arizona.

One impact could come in Idaho, another state where (though to a lesser degree than in Arizona) illegal immigration is a hot topic. One state legislator involved in it is state Senator Mike Jorgenson, R-Hayden Lake, who has worked with the Arizona law's sponsor (Senator Russell Pearce), champions the law and would like to see Idaho do something similar.

The Coeur d'Alene Press quotes him as saying, "I'm just tickled to death with what they're doing. One of these days I think Idaho's going to look back and say 'I wish this had happened sooner.'"

Watch for it in the bill filings of the next legislative session. (Jorgenson is opposed in the primary election but not in the general; he is highly likely to be back in Boise next January.)

The view from here is that the new Arizona law is a moral abomination and lunacy as a practical matter, and extremely likely to be tossed out in court. As a political matter, it also could have the effect of energizing a latino voting base that often has been under-represented and under-organized in many western states, including Idaho. The repercussions may go far and wide.

Well, yes, it is fair subject matter.

It's a gray line sometimes in the area of political candidates when it comes to what's properly public information and where the drapes of privacy should run. You can pretty reasonably say, though, that the higher the office, the less privacy you can expect (to the point that in the case of the presidency, your expectation should be not far from zero).

And most people probably would agree with this: That by the time you become a credible candidate for Congress, you should expect to disclose where your household income comes from, and in rough terms how much it is. Members of Congress have to make a lot of decisions that favor or damage people, and the voters who send them there - the voters being the boss - ought to know what sort of financial background is involved.

That's the problem with the complaint by Republican congressional candidate Vaughn Ward, that yesterday's Idaho Statesman story was an inappropriate attack on his wife, Kirsten, who has been a tech manager for the federal-backed (and fedreally bailed-out) Fannie Mae. During last year and this when Ward is spending nearly all his time running for Congress, her pay has evidently been the main income for the family. Ward complained (on KBOI radio) that the wives of Idaho's senators haven't been similarly scrutinized; but then, they aren't and haven't been the main breadwinners in those households.

The source of Ward's income had puzzled quite a few people, since he evidently isn't independently wealthy and seems to have had no employment for more than a year other than his part-time Marine reservist work. Had he, for example, been living off loans? If so, from who? Had someone just been donating funds to him personally? The reality turns out to be a lot better than some of the scenarios that could come to mind.

The Statesman's editor, Vicki Gowler, said that "Our interest in this story was not Ward's wife, but the disparity between candidate Ward's criticism of federal bailouts while his livelihood depends on an institution that had to be rescued by just such a bailout."

Which may be fair enough on its merits, but just as fair would be this: For the same reasons that voters have available campaign finance reports, they should be informed - in general terms at least - where the candidates for high office get their personal money. The fact in this case that it had been a mystery to so many people for so long is telling by itself. And the nature of Ward's response to it suggests too that it is having some political effect at the ground level.

Vaughn Ward

Raul Labrador

Some weeks ago, a friend - an Idaho Republican - speculated that some interest and political significance might attach to the matter of Vaughn Ward's income. His speculation then didn't seem to have any specifics associated with it. But with an article out today, he may turn out to be right.

Ward, a Republican, is running in the 1st U.S. House district now represented by Democrat Walt Minnick; he is opposed in the Republican primary chiefly by state Representative Raul Labrador of Eagle.

A month out from the primary, Ward has most of the advantages over Labrador. He has a lot more money (having crossed the half-million mark, he probably has between five and ten times as much as Labrador). He has near-official support from the Republican infrastructure in Washington, and the lion's share of endorsements within Idaho from elected Republicans, including a lot of the legislators with whom Labrador serves. Much of the state's Republican establishment has coalesced around Ward. In what is for practical purposes a two-man race, history says that Ward should win and that it won't be close.

We're not placing any bets against that, either. But in the last couple of months some discordant notes have struck, and one from today could resonate.

A story by reporter Dan Popkey in the Idaho Statesman today answers the question our Republican friend posed some time ago: How Ward is supporting himself during a solid year spent campaigning. The answer is that - apart from a modest income from the Marine reserves - his wife Kirsten has been working as a technology manager. Her employer is Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association), which is a congressionally-sponsored corporation - semi-public, semi-private - set up "to purchase and securitize mortgages in order to ensure that funds are consistently available to the institutions that lend money to home buyers." And yes, Fannie Mae has been smack in the middle of the mortgage crisis of the last couple of years.

And as Popkey noted, "Fannie Mae was spared bankruptcy by federal bailouts. It has received $76 billion since being taken over by the Federal Housing Financing Agency in 2008. Taxpayers are on the hook for an additional $125 billion, according to Fannie Mae." A short leap takes you - or maybe Labrador - to the idea that Ward's candidacy is effectively underwritten by a federal finance bailout.

It wouldn't be a fair formulation; Kirsten Ward's job evidently has had to do with keeping the computer systems running, not with packaging mortgages. But the politics involved could be treacherous.

Popkey points out, for example, that Ward has railed consistently across the big bailout payoffs and said in January, "We've watched the federal government spend billions of dollars on huge bank bailouts while our community banks fail." That potent point of outrage stands to get undermined by household employment at Fannie Mae.

There's something more fundamental here, though, that goes to the core dynamics of the race. (more…)