Posted under Republican Party
A lot of people have been unhappy with Michael Steele’s performance at the Republican National Committee (RNC). The perception is that Steele has been doing more self promoting than RNC promoting. But this revelation should be the final straw. Steele has got to go.
The stuff about the risque club in California doesn’t bother me as much as the overall lavish spending. It is not clear that the RNC had control over where the SoCal money was spent and just remitted a bill after the fact. (If they had prior knowledge then I would be upset.) But there is no excuse for stuff like this:
The RNC spent more than $17,000 on private jet travel in February as well as nearly $13,000 for limousines and car services, and also ran up tabs at luxe hotels including the Beverly Hills Hotel ($9,000); the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons ($6,600) and the W Hotel in Washington ($15,000). The GOP’s controversial midwinter meeting in Hawaii ended up costing the party $43,000 in expenses, not including airfare, the records show.
Steele has come under steady fire for his financial stewardship of the organization. The RNC had more than $22 million on hand when Steele arrived last year, but is down to under $10 million now despite raising $96 million during that time, records show. The Daily Caller website, which first noted the new FEC filings, also reported that Steele had suggested that the RNC should purchase a private jet for his travels after he first took over the job in January 2009.
I realize that what Steele does may require purchasing plane tickets at the last minute rather than waiting for a rate he can afford on Travelocity like the rest of us peons, but private jets? Dude take Delta. Coach. The Beverly Hills Hotel? How ’bout you stay in the Motel 6 like the rest of us yahoos in flyover country your party pretends to represent.
Addendum: BTW, we here at CHT warned you about Steele (here and here) early on. We hate to say we told you so but …
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Patroon on 29 Mar 2010 at 10:05 pm #
Apparently the word is the “non-committee staffer” was one Erik Brown, a political consultant from California. But how and why he was able to bill the RNC for the Voyeur West Hollywood Club and then get reimbursed for said “business meeting” remains a mystery.
A juicy mystery no less….
Sean Scallon on 30 Mar 2010 at 7:01 pm #
You’ll love this. Apparently Erik Brown was trying to impress the blue-blazer mafia by indulging them in their favorite pastime, habituating “gentlemen’s clubs”
“An RNC investigation of the incident found that the Voyeur party was attended by a group of young Republicans who had been at an official party “Young Eagles” event at the Beverly Hills Hotel the same night, according to an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post. The Young Eagles is an RNC program to cultivate 30-to-40-year-olds as major future donors.
The request for reimbursement was then submitted on behalf of Brown by an unidentified RNC staffer who “was aware that this activity was not eligible for reimbursement and had been previously counseled on this very subject,” according to the memo, which was written by the committee chief of staff, Ken McKay.”
The real farce is that someone on the RNC allowed an outside consultant to think they could get away with being reimbursed for this kind of expenditure. But hey, it’s all in how Conservative Inc. works.
RedPhillips on 30 Mar 2010 at 9:59 pm #
Hey. Where’s my Young Eagles invite? I’m jealous.