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Friday, April 07, 2006

PA-07: Curt Weldon Sells Access via His Daughter

Posted by DavidNYC

What is it with Republicans setting up their inexperienced family members with lucrative gigs in the GOP money machine? First we learned that Reps. Doolittle and Sweeney let their wives - who had no consulting experience - skim off the top and collect a percentage of all funds raised for their campaigns. Now it turns out that Curt Weldon's daughter (also neophyte) has earned scads of money as a lobbyist by helping her clients to "develop relationships" with none other than her father.

TPM Muckraker gets credit for pointing us to this LA Times story from 2004 which lays out all the sordid details:

Karen Weldon, an inexperienced 29-year-old lobbyist from suburban Philadelphia, seemed an unlikely choice for clients seeking global public relations services.

Yet her tiny firm was selected last year for a plum $240,000 contract to promote the good works of a wealthy Serbian family that had been linked to accused war criminal Slobodan Milosevic.

Despite a lack of professional credentials, she had one notable asset — her father, U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who is a leading voice in Washington on former Eastern Bloc affairs.

...

Karen Weldon said her father "developed a rapport" with the Karics and introduced her to them. But her firm, Solutions North America Inc., won the consulting contract on its merits, she said. Her father declined to answer questions for this article.

The congressman also has gone to bat for at least two of Solutions' other clients, both struggling Russian companies.

Together, the three contracts are worth almost $1 million a year to her firm for services that have included joining her father on congressional trips and in meetings with clients.

Nice work, if you can get it. This whole charade may technically be kosher, but as is often the case, the real crime is that it's legal in the first place. As they say, there oughta be a law. If you wanna make that happen, support Joe Sestak.

P.S. Sestak's been added to the combined netroots-wide ActBlue page. He's very much worthy of our support. He's running in a lean-Dem district (D+3.6, the seventh-most Dem CD held by a Republican), he's shown himself to be a strong fundraiser, and - as should be clear to everyone by now - he's taking on a seriously crazy mouth-breathing wingnut. If there is indeed a Democratic wave this year, one place the Republican dominoes will surely fall is in the Democratic-leaning suburbs of Philly - ie, exactly where Sestak is running. Bowers has more here.

Posted at 03:14 PM in 2006 Elections - House, Pennsylvania | Technorati

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Comments

Oh, David--Sestak's now on the Netroots Actblue page, if you'd prefer to link to that.

Posted by: HellofaSandwich at April 7, 2006 04:23 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

David, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but I just found out there's a Fighting Dem candidate in my district that I didn't see listed on the Band of Brothers page or the Fighting Dems page. Dennis Spivack is running against GOP rep. Mike Castle for DE-AL. Spivack's a lawyer, a philanthropist, and a Vietnam vet (Naval intelligence). Unlike Senators Carper and Biden, he opposed the bankruptcy bill.

Website: http://www.spivackforcongress.org/
Blog (brand new): http://spivackforcongress.blogspot.com/

Posted by: X Stryker at April 7, 2006 04:57 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment