Saturday, July 31, 2010

Corbett and the healthcare reform suit: another political link

It may seem to be nitpicking, but Keystone Progress has found another instance of Tom Corbett the candidate and Tom Corbett the Attorney General overlapping.

The judge in the case where Corbett is challenging healthcare reform regularly receives dividends from Campaign Solutions. Bush appointee District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson has received between $5,000 and $15,000 in dividends annually from Campaign Solutions since at least 2003 according to documents received posted by Judicial Watch.1,2

Campaign Solutions is a communications firm that works primarily for Republican candidates and causes. One of their clients is Friends of Tom Corbett.3 They have also done work for the Republican State Committee.

While the Corbett payment is small (only $400), it once again shows a pattern of behavior that blurs the role of Corbett the candidate and Corbett the Attorney General.

Same Stein, writing for the Huffington Post, provided the initial research that led us to investigate Corbett’s ties to Hudson and Campaign Solutions. Stein’s article focused on another Attorney General in the healthcare reform case, Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli, who has spent at least $9,000 with Campaign Solutions.

Again, the amount of money may be small, but as Stein writes, “The nexus between the chief lawyer and the judge spurs questions about judicial objectivity. At the very least, it shows how tightly connected the legal and political worlds can be and how difficult it is to remove the partisan threads from the heath care related lawsuits.”4

1http://www.judicialwatch.org/jfd/Hudson_Henry_E/2003.pdf

2http://www.judicialwatch.org/jfd/Hudson_Henry_E/2008.pdf

3http://www.campaignfinance.state.pa.us/ExpenseSearchResults.aspx?RequestID=39662&StartRow=1&RowsPerPage=10&SortOrder=0

4 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/30/henry-hudson-judge-in-hea_n_665240.html

No comments: