And now a little blast from the past… Funny how some stories more easily disappear when it’s the heart of election season and the story casts a liberal Democrat incumbent in a bad light. The last Saturday in September is the perfect time to dive back into the Mount Virtus archives to remind readers why it’s time to bring home my Democratic Congressman.
From July 15, 2009, a look at ethically challenged Ed Perlmutter and a Washington Times scoop that should find its way back onto the radar of local political reporters:
Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado inserted a provision into the recently passed House climate change bill that would drum up business for “green” banks, such as the one he has invested in and his family and a political donor helped found in San Francisco.
The bill calls on bank regulators to promote green banking and says federal dollars should be used to support energy-efficient home improvements at government-funded housing projects.
Mr. Perlmutter, a two-term Democrat, has two investments in the 3-year-old New Resource Bank, which calls itself the nation’s first green bank. Among other environmentally conscious banking products, the bank offers home equity loans for consumers to make their homes more energy efficient, in addition to construction loans for green builders….
New Resource also lists Deana Perlmutter, the congressman’s former spouse, and his father, Leonard Perlmutter, among those who have invested “seed capital and effort” to get the venture off the ground, according to the bank’s Web site.
Mr. Perlmutter’s sponsorship of the GREEN Act given his financial stake in the bank raises ethical questions.
Ethical questions, indeed, questions that also were raised in July 2009 by the Denver Post‘s David Harsanyi, my fellow 7th CD resident Mr. Bob and locally-based libertarian opinion leader Rossputin, to name a few.
With so much going on in the world of local and national political news, it’s easy to let a revealing story like this one slip down the memory hole. But here’s guessing the mainstream media will be compelled to talk about Ed Perlmutter’s ethical challenges between now and November 2 — that is, if the Ryan Frazier campaign spends money to make it an issue. And they should.
At the end of my original post on ethically-challenged Ed Perlmutter I wrote:
To me the incident more effectively speaks to the easy culture of corruption in Congress — the Democrats are at least as bad as their Republican predecessors, and that says a lot — than to a specific opportunity to unseat Perlmutter in 2010.
A lot will have to happen before a credible GOP challenge can be mounted against Perlmutter.
Well, how times change! The credible challenge of Ryan Frazier clearly has emerged. Polling shows a neck-and-neck race with liberal Perlmutter’s support hovering around 40 percent, a sure sign of trouble for the incumbent. It would only make sense for Perlmutter’s Republican rival to bring one self-imposed cause of his election season challenges to the attention of voters here in the 7th Congressional District.
For those who live elsewhere, take note of the recent observation by RedState’s Moe Lane: that the swing district of CO-07 just might be the bellwether of the nation. If the fiscally conservative wave sweeps Ed Perlmutter out of office, it will not be undeserved.
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