Posted on 03/27/2006 7:39:01 AM PST by SmithL
It's starting to get personal in the Oakland mayor's race -- and the focus is front-runner Ron Dellums' post-congressional career as a Washington lobbyist.
In their efforts to escape Dellums' shadow, rivals Nancy Nadel and Ignacio De La Fuente are going after the longtime congressman's reputation for political purity. The targets include his refusal to release tax returns, questions over how his profession would be described on the ballot -- and his recent service in the revolving-door ranks of lawmakers-turned-lobbyists.
"The voters have a right to know what we've done and what we've earned for the last eight years,'' De La Fuente said at a news conference Thursday, pressing Dellums to join him in releasing his income taxes.
In Dellums' case, some of those earnings have come to his lobbying firm from Rolls-Royce, a defense outfit that received $1.9 billion in mostly no-bid contracts with the Department of Defense from 1998 to 2003. Among the contracts was one to provide engines for planes that flew bombing missions over Iraq, a red flag for progressive types.
Records show that Rolls-Royce paid Dellums and Associates at least $120,000 in 2004 and 2005. Dellums said the money was payment for his firm's efforts to land federal contracts for Rolls-Royce to retrofit engines on aging C-1 cargo and troop transport planes. He said that would help preserve jobs in Oakland, where the company has an engine retooling factory.
Dellums says his lobbying firm had nothing to do with Rolls-Royce winning contracts for bomber engines, and insists that every consulting and lobbying job he took was "wholly consistent'' with the values he upheld during his 27 years in Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
THEN HE SHOULD GIVE THEM THEIR MONEY BACK!!!! So he was a lobbyist, but not a good one????? WOW!!!! Do they really think people will buy this?
Red Ron in trouble in Bluest city of Blue state?..........
It doesn't matter. Ron Dellums could strangle puppies on Live TV every night for a week before Election Day and still win at a walk.
You've got that right.
Does anybody else remember that Red Ron was the biggest check kiter of the House Bank way back in the last century, with Barbara Boxer in second place?
Red Ron in California's own Marion Berry.
in=is, of course.
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