This week's public meltdown by MNGOP Chair and failed burrito baron Tony Sutton on the pages of the Post Bulletin lends added irony to a another unrelated story published earlier in the week by Roll Call.
Sutton stamped his little foot, accused a Mower county official of tryong to "blackmail" him and whined to PB reporter Kay Fate, saying:
"It's hard to raise money. It's a recession; it's the winter-time, and we're doing the best we can. They're going to get paid, that's going to happen."
On Monday, Roll Call reported in FEC Has Many Queries for Members:
A handful of Members of Congress have among them received hundreds of complaints from the Federal Election Commission about inaccuracies in their campaign finance reports over the past several years, far beyond the average of most campaigns. . . .
. . .It is not just individual campaigns that receive questions from the FEC. Including political action committees, joint fundraising committees and other campaign entities, the commission has sent out 48,000 requests for clarification in the past seven years.
“That is an alarming number,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen who monitors campaign finance laws. “When there are that many letters, it also strongly suggests that there are a lot of problems going on.”
Leading the way was the Republican Party of Minnesota with 153 letters since 2003.
“We went through a couple different accounting people and they frankly made mistakes in our reports,” state party Chairman Tony Sutton said. “It was kind of a headache to go through all of that but we fixed those mistakes and hopefully it is all behind us.”
Sutton's involvement with party finances during these years is chronicled by MNObserver here at the Cucking Stool. and his wizardry at running Baja Sol into the ground isreviewed by Phoenix Woman in a series of posts at FDL, including the classic, Tough Times at Tony Sutton’s Turkey Farm.
It's so hard to get good help these days.
Related: Read MNPublius's take on the Mower County episode here.
"failed burrito baron"
This is the best sobriquet I've heard since SPY magazine branded Donald Trump for all eternity as a "short-fingered vulgarian."
With any luck, from now on the term "failed burrito baron" will never be uttered unless it is followed immediately by "Tony Sutton".
Kudos!
Posted by: Tild Dallelie | Mar 05, 2011 at 10:16 AM