Just days ago, Landrieu’s office
admitted a humiliating incident that it wrongly billed its taxpayer-paid office
account for campaign travel expenses involving chartering a plane, a
consequence of trying to submit a certain campaign image to voters. Its defense
was that a simple clerical error had been made – despite the
dubious nature of the claim and even as the apparent
practice of the vendor is to send her office the bills and then it sorts them
out.
But now another instance, in some
ways even more interesting, has popped up. Landrieu’s office now says it will
reimburse out of the campaign account at least part of a $5,700 charter bill
for the Shreveport to Dallas leg that also included a leg from New Orleans on
Sep. 22, 2013. Flying into Shreveport was on official
business during the weekend, but the next morning she had to head back to
Washington. So she took a charter flight from Shreveport to Dallas where she
could catch a commercial flight the next day, but only after she engaged in
some fundraising activity there before leaving.
Senate rules allow for interspersing
non-official business with official business and paying for it all with
taxpayer dollars so long as the non-official portion comprises less than 15
percent of the reason for the trip (Federal Election Commission rules on campaign
use are more stringent.). Further, as her office argued, since there are no
direct flights from Shreveport to Washington, it could be reasonable to infer that
since she must travel to Dallas in order to get back to Washington that this
leg also could be construed as part of official travel, and therefore it didn’t
really need to report this as a campaign expense, but was doing so out of
caution.
Except that when analyzed this
interpretation doesn’t hold water. Landrieu did not “have” to go to Dallas.
Using this day of publication as an example – meaning a booking is done two days
before the flight – from Shreveport Regional to any Washington airport there
are 40 available flights and of them only 15 go through Dallas-Fort Worth
International. The remainder go through Houston-Bush International or
Hartsfield International (Atlanta). Of the DFW ones, one is at 6:10 AM and a
couple of others in the mid-morning – plenty of time to get to a later morning
fundraiser.
But the larger point is that this
wasn’t a matter of she was going to Dallas anyway to get to D.C., so she might
as well have a fundraiser on an enforced layover. She could have gone other
routes (9 of which left before 9 AM and would have gotten her into D.C. between
noon and 3 PM). The only compelling reason instead of spending the night in
Shreveport rather than to go to Dallas was a fundraiser. And if you won’t go
commercial, why not drive the 190 miles and, after considering airport check
ins and outs, spend only an extra hour in travel?
The facts are, Dallas had a
fundraiser, Landrieu didn’t want to lose beauty sleep to drive over late Sunday
night or early morning, and she didn’t want to wait to fly commercially to get
there, so she charted a plane and hit up taxpayers, when she could have just
flown straight through to D.C. and more conveniently by avoiding Dallas. That
unambiguously means the trip there was for a fundraiser and from the start
should have been paid out of the campaign account. This reversal now is not out
of “abundance of caution,” it’s trying to justify an improper decision in the
first place and presenting a solution in the hopes that people will forget
about the lapse.
Which does not seem to be
working, as now Landrieu
has ordered a review of her entire 18 years of travel. The strategy here is
to assert a clean bill of health to give credence to the narrative she
desperately wants to establish that these recent errors are uncharacteristic to
try to head off the growing perception that none of this was accidental. Adding
another incident of misuse of taxpayer dollars that makes her behavior look
more and more habitual, makes more and more credible the theory that Landrieu
knew she’d be looking at an expensive reelection battle – confirmed now that she
has fallen behind main challenger Rep. Bill
Cassidy in money available on which to campaign and was outraised by him
last quarter – and gave orders to pay by other means campaign bills as much as
possible, even if illegal.
Even if that reckless disregard
of the people’s money or conscious attempt to gain an unethical advantage over
her opponents is not what actually happened, these incidents present plenty of
ammunition to voters to wonder that if Landrieu has so many problems with her
staff handling money – twice in two months – how can she be trusted to handle
taxpayer funds? Rest assured opponents contesting her reelection will ask this
question time and time again until the election is settled.
1 comment:
The only reason Mary Landrieu is so close in this election is because she has faced inept, non-appealing candidates. Her opponent has not put a plan out to the people of his own. His whole campaign has been a one issue campaign, known as Obamacare. He appears to me to be an opportunist, he backed Mary in preceeding elections and donated to her re-election bid.
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