Josh Marshall reports on Katherine Harris’ ties to a defense contractor and his company who are in the middle of lots of slimy looking deals.
“A defense contractor who took a $700,000 loss on the purchase of Rep. Randy Cunningham’s Del Mar residence in 2003, and provided a yacht for his use in the nation’s capital, forced his employees to make political contributions that benefited the San Diego Republican and other members of Congress, according to three former senior officials of the company.”
There’s also this intriguing nugget: “A third former employee of MZM described being rounded up along with other employees one afternoon in the company’s Washington headquarters and told to write a check with the political recipient standing by. The former employee didn’t give the name of the politician receiving the donations.”
……In the 2004 cycle the MZM political action committee gave out $34,000 to House candidates. The totals go like this …
Cunningham, Randy “Duke” (R-CA) $6,000
Forbes, J Randy (R-VA) $5,000
Goode, Virgil H Jr (R-VA) $10,000
Harris, Katherine (R-FL) $10,000
Hunter, Duncan (R-CA) $1,000
Renzi, Rick (R-AZ) $2,000So Katherine Harris got $10,000 from the MZM Pac. And during the same cycle she got another $32,000 from employees of MZM.
Actually, not just during the same cycle. If you look at this read-out from OpenSecrets.org you’ll see that that $32,000 came in 16 checks for $2000 each. And 14 of those $2,000 checks were written out on one day — March 23rd, 2004, a Tuesday.
The two other were written out on April 1st, 2004 a Thursday by MZM owner Mitchell Wade’s wife: Christiane Wade.
With Cunningham and Goode, Mitchell Wade had some very specific piece of business he wanted help with. What was his angle on Katherine Harris?
Hmmmm…