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Home > Blogs > Butler County News and Issues > Archives > 2010 > August > 05
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Fore! Billboard claims Boehner spends too much time on the green
From this story:
Motorists headed to Cincinnati on Interstate 75 are likely to notice a billboard that went up this week featuring a photo of U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp., swinging a golf club.
“When was the last time you golfed 119 times in one year?” the sign asks.
The billboard is an attack on Boehner funded by the national Blue America Political Action Committee. The PAC has raised $16,000 for billboards and other media attacks on Boehner.
“We think we’re going to spend much, much more than that on Justin (Coussoule, Boehner’s Democratic opponent),” said Blue America PAC founder Howie Klein.
The billboard refers to reports that Boehner’s PAC spent more than $80,000 on golf outings last year, and Boehner headlined 119 Republican fundraisers.
Boehner campaign spokesman Cory Fritz calls the billboard’s claim “false.”
“Congressman Boehner held seven golf events last year, not 119,” Fritz said. “He did hold 119 events in the District and across the country to benefit conservative candidates…but only seven were golf outings.”
“Being minority leader or speaker of the House means John Boehner has a bigger platform to push for the priorities and values of the people of the 8th District of Ohio,” Fritz said. “If that makes him a bigger target for folks outside of Ohio who disagree with those priorities, so be it. It goes with the territory.”
Despite Boehner’s prominence on the national stage as he aims to become speaker if Republicans take back the House in the fall, Coussoule’s campaign says this sort of help from outside the district has been unusual.
“We are really, really a grassroots campaign,” said Alliea Phipps, Coussoule’s campaign manager. “I don’t think we’re getting more money because he’s running for speaker of the House, but I think we’re getting more money because he’s forgotten the office he’s currently holding and the people he’s representing.”
Coussoule’s campaign has raised $60,407 by June 30, according to his July Federal Elections Commission filing. The vast majority coming from Ohio residents donating less than $500 each.
Boehner’s campaign has raised nearly $4.5 million. His biggest source was also small individual contributions; those required to be listed were mostly from Ohio. He also received roughly $1.7 million in large contributions from PACs across the country.
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Fox charges amended to include bribery and kickbacks
From this story:
Federal prosecutors have amended an indictment against former longtime Butler County politician Michael Fox to specifically refer to his actions as “a bribery and kickback scheme.”
The changes filed Wednesday, Aug. 4, tailor the charges against Fox to a U.S. Supreme Court opinion in June that narrowed the law that Fox was charged under to cases including evidence that defendants accepted bribes or kickbacks, according to Fred Alverson, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“This does not change anything to do with the charges or any of the facts, or any of the penalties,” Alverson said.
But attorneys for Fox said in a statement today, Aug. 5, that the new indictment “could call into question the government’s motives in prosecuting Mr. Fox.”
“We do not think that taking the same facts and dressing them up to look like a new crime will save the government’s indictment,” said the statement from Cincinnati-based attorneys Ralph Kohnen and Aaron Herzig.
Fox’s attorneys have long claimed the entire corruption case has been a politically motivated attack on someone who made “powerful political enemies” in his more than three decades as state lawmaker, Butler County commissioner and Children Services director.
“The indictment that was handed down today appears to advance allegations made by some of Mike’s detractors, who placed a target on the back of a good and decent man,” they said.
Wednesday’s filing could push back the trial date. U.S. District Judge Sandra Beckwith granted an order this week to stay the original Oct. 4 trial date, and has set a scheduling conference for Aug. 18.
Fox and co-defendant Robert C. Schuler were charged in October 2009 with conspiring to improperly benefit off a contract to build Butler County’s fiber optics network.
Fox is accused of not properly reporting roughly $460,000 from Schuler — a Columbus-area attorney who took over the company NORMAP during construction of the fiber optics system — and other vendors doing business with the county when Fox was a commissioner.
Fox is also charged with mail fraud for allegedly failing to disclose conflicts of interest in Ohio ethics disclosure statements he mailed each year from 2004 through 2007.
Schuler also is charged with perjury for alleged false testimony he gave to a federal grand jury on Oct. 1, 2008.
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