I was going to praise Tom Kean Jr. for taking a stand on Dennis Hastert and calling for some accountability — that is, until I read this morning’s Star-Ledger.
The paper is reporting that the candidate has accepted contributions “from employees of the same firms he wanted to remove from the process: those doing business with the state or its authorities.”
The review, covering all donations from when the bill was introduced Dec. 7, 2004, shows Kean accepted contributions from engineering firms, law firms, undewriters and other state contractors. Two of the firms are among the candidate’s top 10 contributors since his political career began in 1999.
The lion’s share of the campaign cash went to Kean’s U.S. Senate fund-raising committee, which is not regulated by state law. About $5,900 of the contractor cash went to a fund-raising committee Kean set up for the 2007 campaign for his state Senate seat.
Kean, of course, had introduced a bill in the state Senate two years ago that would have banned contributions to political campaigns by government contractors, an inconsistency his campaign seems to have no problem with.
I wonder, can he spell hypocrite?
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
Hank Kalet 