Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2007 > August > 28
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Cleland says he’s suspended his aide after arrest
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Max Cleland just called to say that he’s suspended 31-year-old aide Michael Duga until his legal troubles arising from a John Edwards fund-raiser in New England are sorted through.
“I’ve put Michael Duga on administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigation,” Cleland said.
See the full story here.
Duga was arrested after some bizarre behavior in which police say he sought to present himself as a member of Edwards presidential campaign.
On John Linder and Scientology
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Rep. John Linder rang up about an hour ago. He wanted to talk about the Bruce Bartlett attack on the Fair Tax, which we made reference to on Monday.
Most importantly, Linder wanted to explain that he and Tom Cruise are not of the same faith.
In a piece for the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Bartlett, a number cruncher for Bush No. 41, said the Fair Tax “was originally devised by the Church of Scientology in the early 1990s.”
Hogwash, said Linder, who has paired up with local radio talk show host Neal Boortz to write one book on the topic. Another is on the way. Linder and U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss also have a bill pushing a national sales tax in lieu of an income tax.
“I was just astonished. First of all, I know Bruce. I’ve been on the same stage with him. Where this Scientology stuff came from is just beyond me,” Linder said.
The congressman said he understood that another group with a similar aim — Citizens for an Alternative Tax System — had some sort of relationship with the Church of Scientology.
“But CATS has nothing to do with us. In fact, they got very angry when we started Americans for Fair Taxation, because they thought they owned the field. We just ignore them,” Linder said.
Now, we’ve heard enough charges fly back and forth about this — so we called CATS, which was founded in 1990, at its Virginia office. Glenn Wahlquist, the national director, picked up.
Is there a Scientology connection? “There was in the very, very beginning. A couple of guys who founded CATS were Scientologists. Their interest grew out of some of the church’s experience,” Wahlquist said.
The group has peaked. The organization’s phone rings at his house.
Oh, and about Linder’s religion. “I’m not now nor have I ever been a Scientologist,” he said. He is a Presbyterian elder.
Break out the binoculars, Aunt Minney — presidential candidates rolling through
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Within a few hours, Republican Mitt Romney should be touching down in Atlanta for the first of a pair of fund-raisers. This evening’s event is at a private home.
On Wednesday, Romney will be at a fund-raising luncheon at the Grand Hyatt in Buckhead — a minor step up from an appearance earlier this month at the Varsity.
The Buckhead event is headed up by House Speaker pro tem Mark Burkhalter, Fred Cooper, U.S. Reps. Tom Price and Phil Gingrey — among many others.
Both fund-raisers are $1,000 per, at minimum.
Also Wednesday, John Edwards will be at an event in Americus, Ga., at Georgia Southwestern State University. Former President Jimmy Carter will be in attendance, it’s said.
Carter hasn’t made any endorsement in the Democratic presidential contest, and it’ll be a surprise if he does so here. However, Carter’s oldest son on Monday endorsed U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.
Jack Carter noted that Biden was the first senator to support his father in 1975. Moreover, “he was helpful in my own campaign last year,” noted Carter, who was the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Nevada last year. He did not win.
Cleland aide locked up after crashing Edwards party
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A man who serves as former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland’s top aide is in the hoosegow up in Martha’s Vineyard after trying to pass himself off as an official with the John Edwards presidential campaign.
The Boston Globe is reporting that the Cleland aide “has a criminal history that includes selling drugs and carjacking,” and that he “also allegedly had stolen campaign documents in his possession.” Secret Service agents participated in his questioning.
The most complete account comes from the Vineyard Gazette:.
Police say 31-year-old Michael Duga used a credential identifying himself as the chief of staff to former Sen. Maxwell Cleland of Georgia to gain access to the event.
Once inside, he purported to be a top official for the Edwards campaign to some while representing himself as a paying guests to others. According to Mr. MacDonald, the host of the event, Mr. Duga was neither.
Then there was this:
Mr. Duga’s appearance at the fundraiser was only part of his bizarre behavior over the weekend. Although police are not sure when Mr. Duga arrived on the Island, they believe he rented a room in a bed and breakfast in Aquinnah where he asked another guest if he could borrow their vehicle to find better cell phone service.
Mr. Duga then reportedly drove the vehicle, a Chevy Suburban, to the Edwards fundraiser where he worked most of the night at the front table where people purchased tickets. Toward the end of the fundraiser, Mr. Duga reportedly tried to stop a photographer from taking pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Edwards.
According to the police report, Mr. Duga got a ride to the airport with the Edwards party after the event, although he missed the flight to the next campaign stop.
Instead, Mr. Duga spent the night on the Island, and was next spotted Saturday around 8 a.m. when the Menemsha Coast Guard Station called Chilmark police to report a suspicious person on their property. Coast Guard officials later told police Mr. Duga was looking through paperwork and made some telephone calls from the Coast Guard boat house without permission.
Just got off the phone with Cleland, who has employed Duga for the last three years. Duga was by his side last month, when Cleland signed on to help a Woodstock biotech firm — the former senator’s first job in the private sector.
Cleland said that the police description of events “was not consistent with [Duga’s] behavior, character or background as I’ve known him.
“We’ll wait to see the outcome of the investigation,” he said.
Cleland, by the way, did not attend the Edwards’ party. He was here in Atlanta. He gave the Democratic response to President Bush’s weekly radio address on Saturday.
Broun’s congressional victory was 50 percent self-sufficient
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The final lines following the final rounds of the 10th District congressional race are in.
Republican physician Paul Broun of Athens won, of course. And he’s the poorer for it. At least for now.
Federal campaign disclosures filed late this month show that Broun raised a total $413,000 for the race.
More than 50 percent of that sum — $209,000 — came in the form of personal loans Broun made to himself. As of Aug. 6, his total campaign debt stood at $230,000.
As an incumbent, Broun has an opportunity to recoup some of that. Part of Broun’s total — for instance, a July 31 contribution of $1,000 from Georgia Power — came well after his victory.
But Broun also has an ’08 campaign to fund as well — which could become expensive, given that he already has opposition in the general election, and will likely have an opponent in the primary as well.
Broun defeated former state senator Jim Whitehead, a Republican from Columbia County, in a July 17 run-off. Whitehead — the heavy favorite — raised more than twice the funds that Broun did. That’s $983,511, to be exact.
Even in the final days of the contest, Whitehead contributors included some of the biggest money players in Georgia politics, including Coke, Home Depot, and the top lobbyists and lobbying firms in the state Capitol.
Whitehead loaned himself $60,000 for the race.
Grady’s problem: A former board member says it’s Emory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Late Monday, a package began circulating around the state Capitol that appears sure to heat up legislative interest in the plight of Grady Memorial Hospital.
The entire contents can be found here. The most inflammatory portion is a three-page letter from Bill Loughrey, a former member of the hospital authority that governs Grady. He was ousted from the board last month.
The letter from Loughrey is addressed to state Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth), author of legislation to mandate that Grady be put under the management of a non-profit corporation — as a requisite before any state funding of Grady occurs.
Loughrey disagrees. He says the root of Grady’s predicament is not its lack of a corporate structure. He says the problem is the hospital’s relationship with Emory University, which has day-to-day control over many of the hospital’s operations.
In his letter to Shafer, Loughrey claims that an audit, which has not been made public, “found that Emory was under-funding and under-staffing profitable service lines such as cardiology and orthopedics that compete with Emory-owned hospitals, including Crawford Long.”
Loughrey also claims that the audit has been kept secret, and that much of the money proposed for a Grady bail-out — in the form of a loan proposed by the authority — would go to Emory.
Moreover, the former authority member says that Emory University employees who have drawn attention to the alleged conflict of interest have been fired — and then hushed up with settlements.
We can’t vouch for Loughrey’s charges. Expect the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority to address them sometime today. But to say that Loughrey’s charges have made an impression on Shafer is to understate the situation.
In a two-page cover letter to Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, Shafer said Loughrey has raised “a number of very troubling issues.”
“Particularly disquieting is the revelation that Grady has not only failed to take remedial action on an audit conducted over two years ago, but that it has kept the audit secret. I have been advised by legislative counsel that the report of this audit is subject to the [state] Open Records Act, and I have asked Grady to provide me with a copy. I will be sure to advise you of Grady’s response.”
Shafer’s message, with Loughery’s letter attached, was copied to the whole of the Senate’s Republican leadership.
Loughrey served two four-year terms as a member of the authority. Until July, he had been serving as a temporary member, until a replacement was formally named.
Loughrey was dumped from the board after a bit of grand-standing, in which he took it upon himself to hand Cobb County a $4 million bill — which Loughrey said was owed by the county for its residents who had used Grady’s services. The bill was rejected.
