Life and Deatherage: Inhofe still has no character

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Inhofe still has no character

Senator James Inhofe is a dangerous idiot, as is well-documented on this site and on others. Inhofe is ten days away from the general election, and he's running against former Oklahoma governor David Walters -- and slipping in the polls all the time. You know this to be true because the Worst Newspaper in America refuses to run any polling information, for if Inhofe were ahead, the paper would certainly be trumpeting it. A Tulsa World poll

The Oklahoman's bias doesn't seem to be as much in favor of Inhofe as against Walters. Like Bill Clinton, Walters was governor of a mid-southern state in the early 1990s, and like Bill Clinton, the paper hates him with a passion. It's psychopathic, really. Take a look at the record: in most articles that mentions David Walters in any more depth than "he's a candidate for Senate," the paper brings up "campaign finance violations":

2002.09.26: In an article entirely about Walters calling out Inhofe's abysmal environmental record, the paper closes the piece with its standard Walters biography, including "He pleaded guilty in 1993 to a misdemeanor campaign finance violation relating to his 1990 campaign."
I can't find the original AP story, but I seriously doubt it included this bumper. That's because an earlier AP story from the same template did not. That story covered Walters pointing out that Inhofe was one of only 24 Senators to vote against providing Oklahoma - his own state - $93 million in medical aid to help the poor. Inhofe winds up looking like an idiot because his staff points out that he voted for the final bill -- over his objections that Oklahoma got too much money. Even the Oklahoman's own coverage left out the campaign finance angle. That likely didn't sit well with the paper's Evil Overlords. (You can read reporter Clayton Bellamy's full report on Walters here, courtesy no less than the National Republican Senatorial Committee, explaining why anything slightly negative to Democrats is highlighted.)
2002.10.25: When the issue of Walters's past campaign finance didn't come up in the final Senate debate between the two candidates, the Oklahoman's Chris Casteel made sure to add it in the third graf of the story: "No mention was made of past campaign finance scandals." In this story, Inhofe says his polls show him with a 27-point lead over Walters, but the Oklahoman declines to confirm that.
2002.10.22: The campaign finance angle comes up in the first paragraph of Mick Hinton's story, and his bio of Walters matches the earlier "AP" bumper: "Walters, 50, was elected governor in 1990. In 1993, he was indicted on several felony counts involving campaign irregularities. As part of a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, then announced he would not seek a second term as governor."

There are a few stories, like here, where the campaign angle doesn't come up at all. And the paper did mention the campaign finance angle in a couple of legitmate stories, mostly when covering primary opponent Tom Boettcher, such as here. Strangely enough, in the one story where it would seem to be a legitimate issue - how much money candidates have raised - the Oklahoman is silent on Walters's past.

And now that the race is getting close, Inhofe has started running attack ads. This is a particularly twisted view of Inhofe's logic, because he'd pledged to run a clean campaign as long as Walters did, but says that in one of the debates, Walters "went negative" so now Inhofe can as well. What provoked Inhofe's determination? Walters made the point, in the debate, that Inhofe ran a business (Quaker Life Insurance) into the ground, and that while it was going into receivership, Inhofe continued to draw millions of dollars in salary from the company as well as putting family members on the payroll. As far as can be determined, this is true and, at the time, legal. Only post-Enron reforms might make it illegal, but it's a valid point. Inhofe had just said that CEOs who sell stock while they know their company is tanking should be put in jail, and Walters said he engaged in similar behavior and that it was inconsistent. Walters was right.

You can see Inhofe's pathetic response here. It's a smear on Walters for the campaign finance problems of 1990, preceding a one-sentence non-denial denial: "In 1988 there was no evidence of self dealing on the part of anyone involved with Quaker Life Insurance, and that hasn't changed." Well, for starters, it can't change that there was no evidence in 1988; if a smoking gun emerged tomorrow, there still wouldn't have been any evidence in 1988 and that wouldn't haev changed. Duh. Second, since "self dealing" has no meaning, it's easy for Inhofe to deny that there was any.

The real deal

Once again, though, every criticism of Walters is based on this campaign finance scandal. Inhofe's ads say Walters was indicted on "8 felony counts, including six counts of perjury," just like the Web site says. It's clear this is part of Inhofe's closing-weeks script.

If you want the story, why don't you ask David Walters? His campaign has made the true story available since the beginning, since obviously no Oklahoma newspaper or television station is interested in doing so. It's pretty simple.

In his 1990 run for governor, one donor, a man named Richard Bell, donated more to Walters' campaign than the law allowed, and the campaign didn't catch it because it had been laundered. During the 1990 campaign, 4,629 people donated to Walters for Governor. In its internal audits, the campaign found that seven of those people had donated more than the limit allowed by law. In each case, the campaign returned the contribution, as required by law, and documented.

Richard Bell, however, donated the limit himself, and then gave an extra $13,500 to his aunt and son to donate to the Walters campaign. They did so, and that's illegal (having your family donate your money for you is basic laundering, the kind that would make the campaign finance laws meaningless). Walters had no prior knowledge of the illegal contributions, and because they were laundered through relatives, the campaign's audits didn't catch them (a campaign worker going through donations has no way of knowing where the money you donated came from). All in all, four contributions out of 4,629 were over the limit, all related to Richard Bell.

Now you have to understand that with the Governor's office filled by a Democrat, vindictive nut-case E.L. Gaylord and his staff were furious -- no, livid that Walters had won over their pet candidate, Republican Bill Price. Price was the former US Attorney (remember, Walters defeated a prosecutor) who put lots of Oklahoma's entrenched Democrats in jail because, well, they were taking kickbacks. That was bad, but the GOP loved it because it gave them lots of openings to win elections that Democrats had sewn up for decades. Price would have been succeeding moderate Republican Henry Bellmon as governor, and could have moved the state far to the right, as Gov. Keating has done for the past disastrous eight years. Price wasn't squeaky clean, either: he was embroiled in a controversy over bankrupt oil companies overcharging to benefit a trust his family participated in. What's worse, it was a conflict of interest: while he was US Attorney in Oklahoma, he was supposed enforce a judgement against himself, and he didn't properly recuse himself. Price was so incensed over the allegations that he sued the Walters campaign for libel, but it was dismissed on summary judgement as privileged, something the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld on appeal.

Walters trounced Price 2-to-1 in the general election. And, following the playbook of the day, the right-wing started official investigations just as soon as they could, just as the national GOP did on Bill Clinton as soon as he was elected. Just like Clinton was investigated to the tune of $60 million over five years to discover he'd had extramarital sex, Walters was investigated for 30 months of a 48-month term to the tune of $2 million spent by Oklahoma taxpayers.

In the end, the partisan investigators, egged on daily by the Oklahoman's unhidden bias, found four bad campaign contributions out of nearly 5,000, all related to one person. Prosecutors, who tend to stick together, filed every possible charge they could against Walters, a true big fish defendant. As Inhofe says, the total was eight felony indictments. Two were "conspiracy to defraud the state of Oklahoma" and were based on inaccurate campaign finance reports: Walters' campaign filed reports saying nothing was wrong when something was, and they didn't know it. The other six counts were all perjury, because Walters signed his name to reports certifying they were accurate when they were not.

It should tell you something that the grand jury - a prosecutor's tool that all defense attorneys say would indict a ham sandwich if told to - returned 20 indictments against Walters, but only eight made it to court. The grand jury also wanted Walters impeached, but the Legislature, along partisan lines, chose not to open an inquiry. In case you don't know, by the way, a grand jury only hears what a prosecutor wants it to hear. There is no defense, there is no cross examination.

The government could never have proven any of the eight charges, because to prove perjury or conspiracy, the state has to show that the defendant (Walters) knew he was submitting a false report or statement. There is no evidence for that: in fact, even the Oklahoman published stories saying that Walters did not know of the illegal contributions. He therefore could not have known that his reports were incorrect, and lacked the requisite intent to commit either perjury or conspiracy.

Instead, Walters pled guilty to one misdemeanor charge, paid a $1000 fine, was given a one-year suspended sentence, and most importantly to his partisan prosecutors (state colleagues of former US Attorney Bill Price), turned over all money raised for a 1994 re-election campaign to the State Ethics Commission.

Inhofe's slimy character

Here is what should stick in the craw of every conservative voter everywhere. The right wing is always saying that people need to be responsible for their actions, to deal with mistakes and move on. Walters could have fought these charges for another two years, as Clinton did, and eventually be exonerated of all the charges against him, as Clinton was. Clinton was only ever punished for what he actually did wrong -- he twisted the meanings of "is" and "sex" in a deposition to skirt the truth about his relationship with an intern.

Six years earlier, Walters realized that his campaign had done something wrong, and he pled guilty to only what he actually had done wrong - failing to detect illegal campaign contributions. And yet in a tight Senate race, instead of applauding Walters's character for standing up to his mistakes (something Inhofe would never do, as his previous sojourns with recess appointments and porn-loving staffers prove), Inhofe is trying to deflect legitimate questions about his own past by pretending that these partisan, sham indictments represented real wrongdoing. It was the GOP playbook for the entire 1990s -- investigate until you find something, no matter how minor, and then say it's impeachable. You know how that played out.

Inhofe is a disaster of a Senator. Because he votes exactly as Trent Lott tells him to, he has voted to send hundreds of millions of dollars in Oklahoma tax money to Mississippi to fund federal projects there. Lott watches out for his state; Inhofe does not. Oklahoma has some of the most severe infrastructure needs of any state, but Inhofe votes every year to make sure that Oklahoma doesn't even get back all it pays in federal taxes, much less get more to deal with pressing needs. Of course, Inhofe has no trouble voting to make Mississippi a tax surplus state, because Lott tells him to.

As governor, Walters supported huge increases in public education funding, earning the permanent enmity of the right wing that wants to defund all public education (you should be able to buy schooling for your kids if you want them to read and write, they think). He grew up on a farm, worked as a janitor to pay for college, and put himself through OU and Harvard Business School. He built a successful real estate firm, compared to Inhofe who got control of an insurer and took it into bankruptcy. Walters spent Oklahoma's money on Oklahoma, building roads, schools, and creating jobs. All of this infuriates born-rich Inhofe, who votes with the John Birch Society 84% of the time. Inhofe continues to push for "Star Wars" missile defense (even after 9/11 showed what an expensive boondoggle that is), opposes arms control, is as homophobic as they come, and thinks that you're going to hell if you disagree with him. While Walters was campaigning in Oklahoma, Inhofe was in Washington telling his overlords in the Christian Coalition that defeating liberals "is doing the Lord's work."

Inhofe's hometown paper, the Tulsa World, in a city where he used to be mayor, has endorsed Walters. (The same paper has ridden Steve Largent for years but endorsed him as governor, so don't think it's knee-jerk Democratic politics.)

To some extent, Inhofe is flogging the "campaign finance" issue because it works. Earlier this year, Walters faced a primary challenge from Tulsa Democrat Tom Boettcher, one I criticized heavily because Boettcher's entire platform was "David Walters was indicted and I was not." A reader of this site sent E-mail saying that he knew Boettcher and felt him to be an honorable man, and that he wasn't campaigning on much else because otherwise the two of them agreed on most issues. I've thought about that for several weeks, and ultimately, I have to reject that. It appears that Boettcher had no significant differences with Walters, and the few issues they didn't share weren't enough to mount a campaign on. All available signs are that Boettcher just doesn't like Walters, and that's not an electable platform. Walters has a proven track record working for Oklahoma. Boettcher had venom. If his main goal was defeating Inhofe, as he said, he should not have been a candidate, and he should have endorsed Walters after the primary, something he didn't do until last week.

But Boettcher's attacks got him into a runoff with Walters, and Inhofe has picked up on it. The man who preaches personal responsibility diminishes his own record to distort one of a man who accepted responsibility for his. Inhofe's own ads only promise that he's a "good, conservative" man, as if that makes up for selling out Oklahomans to Trent Lott and the Christian Coalition. Inhofe consistently votes against education, health care, and other issues vital to Oklahomans, while claiming in his ads that he's all for them. He says he "won't vote to cut Social Security benefits," and that may be true -- but he also won't vote to pay for them, forcing cuts by default. He voted for the GOP "prescription drug" bill that simply funds your tax dollars to the drug companies, with no significant cost limits, despite the fact that the US pays 200% to 300% the price for the same drug available from the same company in other countries.

The more you go on, the more you realize that Inhofe is the worst kind of representative there is -- one who works against the people and for the rich. He makes me embarassed to be a Presbyterian, and does not deserve anyone's vote.

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