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MR. ANTI-EARMARK CRUSADER TOOK MORE THAN $200K FROM COMPANIES GETTING EARMARKS
Perhaps the most notable thing Sen. Jim DeMint has done in office is bill himself as an anti-pork barrel crusader who has “cracked down on wasteful government spending” and led the fight for transparent earmark reform. And that’s sort of true, except that he’s not afraid to take boatloads of campaign cash from people who receive piles of the taxpayer-funded goodies.
The Charleston City Paper’s Greg Hambrick picked up on a Seattle Times breakdown of the mound of pork in the 2009 Defense Appropriations Bill and noted that, while DeMint didn’t request any earmarks, he did take thousands from companies that did.
[What] stuck out to us was a hefty $23,000 that DeMint received in campaign contributions over the last five years from Eastman Chemical. The Tennessee company received $4 million in earmark spending. [...]
Eastman has contributed more to his campaign than all but two other congressmen. Lamar Alexander, of the company’s home state of Tennessee, who got $25,700, and Frederick Boucher of Virginia, with $24,000. Fourth is a distant $15,000 to Zach Wamp, also of Tennessee.
With $200,474 in total contributions from companies that benefited from defense earmarks, DeMint outpaces every other South Carolina representative, except for Congressman John Spratt. He’s even got nearly twice the total contributions to Barack Obama’s campaign and John McCain, that other no earmark guy, took in only $18,000 from companies with earmarks.
Hambrick made a great observation by asking, “why is McCain a pariah to [earmark reformers] and DeMint’s the golden child?” I think the answer has much to do with DeMint’s endless personal promotion a la Gov. Mark Sanford.
I’m not dogging him for it, quite the contrary. I give him a lot of credit for being able to do one thing, say another, and keep the masses happy at the same time. That’s very difficult to do.
He voted against the bailout both times.
Adam -
65% of that money was given to DeMint when he was running againt Inez Tenenbaum. Since you weren’t in SC at the time, you wouldn’t remember that she advocated retreat from Iraq and cutting off funding from our troops in the field. Is it any wonder people concerned about our national security would donate to DeMint. They are patriots and so is he. Your baseless attacks on DeMint are damaging your credibility.
Hold on:
Demint says he doesn’t like earmarks
Demint votes against earmarks and doesn’t request earmarks
Doesn’t that mean that Demint is doing what he says he does?
Your logic doesn’t follow. It would be like Barack Obama taking money from the employees of anti-union Wal-Mart (corporations themselves can’t donate). Senator Obama says he’s for unions and his record says he’s for unions; you can bet he’ll pass that horrible card-check idea the unions love so much. There’s not any hypocrisy in accepting campaign funds from employees of an organization you occasionally work against.
Rob – hold on there … Obama is on whatever side of the issue works, and odds are whatever position you’d like him to take, either he has taken it, or sooner or later, he’ll flip and take that position.
Offshore drilling and federal funding for his campaign are two examples that come to mind.
If DeMint paid the Quinns, he’d be a courageous senator standing up to his campaign contributors by neither requesting nor voting for earmarks.
Hmmm.
Looks like you should stick to saying stupid things about Democrats, Adam.
Come on, Adam. This is a poor excuse for a blog hit job. Next time, tell your boss (Rick Quinn) that a paycheck isn’t worth sacrificing your integrity.
Earl- I think you left out the issue that really gets me mad- FISA. I seriously started looking at third party candidates after he switched that vote.
The point was that Demint still votes against earmarks even if he’s getting donations from people who (supposedly) don’t want him to vote for earmarks. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.