Mama Said There Would Be Days Like This

….. and this was one of them.

She also said “Don’t count your chickens ’til they’re hatched,” which is why you haven’t seen end-zone dances or pouting at BizzyBlog over the ups, downs, highs, and lows of the matters brought before the Ohio Elections Commission (OEC). To reduce the amount of crow in my diet, I learned a long time ago not to predict the results of legal and similar proceedings, even ones that look like clear winners. That lesson comes in handy right now, and I can stick to hot dogs and hamburgers.

Today, in a single vote (shades of Hamilton County’s endorsement process), the Commission voted 3-1 that there was not sufficient probable cause to proceed to a full-committee hearing on the four items I brought before the Commission.

Taking the items involved in order:

1. The Commission decided, even after issuing their Reprimand Letter last week admonishing Mr. McEwen “not (to) engage in such activities in future campaigns,” namely the practice of calling himself Congressman McEwen again, did not find probable cause that he had done so again, even though, to name just one of many examples, Mr. McEwen’s web site Endorsements Page called him “Congressman McEwen” for 58 days from January 18 until March 16 or 17.
2. The Commission decided that there wasn’t enough tangible evidence to demonstrate that Mr. McEwen does not “appear frequently” on programs such as Larry King Live, Crossfire, Good Morning America, and The Today Show. The level of evidence the Commission expected would have required audits of records at those four shows going back 15 or so years, and affidavits from everyone involved, which would certainly have cost thousands of dollars.
   No one has the money for that. So if you’re going to make a false resume claim, make sure it’s one that will be cost-prohibitive to disprove, as Mr. McEwen did. Yes, I’m saying the claim is false on its face. Mr. McEwen is welcome to deliver tangible evidence to the contrary; if he tries, I would suggest skipping Larry King Live, as a CNN rep who investigated the matter e-mailed me and said she could find no evidence that Mr. McEwen EVER appeared on LKL (but for the OEC, that’s not good enough as evidence). And I’d suggest skipping Crossfire too, as I have the transcripts from Mr. McEwen’s last three appearances on the program from 1991 and 1992, and a printout from a search performed by that CNN rep with no evidence of a McEwen appearance after 1992 (that’s not good enough for the OEC either). GMA is a waste of time too, as a rep with many, many years of experience there told me she had never heard of him and would certainly remember a name like McEwen (usable as evidence, even though I’m under oath? For get about it.) So that leaves The Today Show. Good luck.
3. The Commission decided that Mr. McEwen’s web site characterization of what you, I, and the rest of the literate world know as The “House Bank (or Banking) Scandal” as the “Democratic (or Democrat) Bank Scandal” is not deceptive, because Tom Delay uttered the term in one article written in April 1992. This is the only known published instance where a human being has called The House Bank Scandal the Democratic Bank Scandal. Google, New York Times, and comprehensive multi-newspaper searches, all covering 1989 through 2006, have shown no other uses of the term. Accordingly, I plan to refer to the scandal the “Pickle Relish Scandal” a couple of times here at BizzyBlog, because after the McEwen campaign finds that someone else is using that term, they can start calling the scandal by that name at their web site, and make it even more deceptive (yet, “of course,” legal).
4. The Commission decided that none of the eight clear endorsement misrepresentations that occurred on the web site were supported by clear-and-convincing-enough evidence, despite Jean Schmidt’s newspaper-covered endorsement by John Willke, the later appearance of two early McEwen “endorsers” as legitimate endorsers at Jean Schmidt’s web site, and the statement of Anthony Munoz’s personal secretary, based on her representation that she spoke with Mr. Munoz about the matter, that Mr. Munoz could not endorse Bob McEwen in the 2006 primary.

Go figure.

What’s really galling was that one Commissioner (before voting AGAINST probable cause!) strongly criticized Mr. McEwen before his counsel as the type of candidate who is always skirting at the edge of the law, and who almost seems to get pleasure out of doing so. This Commissioner (a Republican) practically pleaded with Mr. McEwen’s counsel to tell Mr. McEwen to clean up his act. It was as if he was unburdening his guilty feelings over how he was about to vote. Of course, counsel said okey-dokey. Zheesh.

And to top off this Murphy’s Law day, the people who brought the OEC complaint against Jean Schmidt for misunderstood, and quickly corrected, endorsements that were present on her web site for all of two or three days — won. That full-committee hearing is in late April, exact date and time to be determined.

Is this a great country or what? And if you’re wondering, I don’t think Ted Olson could have gotten a different result.

What remains from all of this, despite the lack of a probable cause finding, is a congressional candidate who:

• Can’t get over the loss of his title 13 years ago, and insists on using it whenever and wherever he can get away with it;
• Laughably (though not “provably”) claims current and frequent TV appearances he hasn’t made (if you’ve got proof I’m wrong, McEwen & Co., bring it on);
• Has never faced up to the fact that he was involved in a scandal where he wrote 166 checks during a 39-month period against balances he didn’t have in his House Bank account (notice I didn’t say “bounced”), offenses which at minimum would have cost you and me $2,500 or more in overdraft fees at 1992 rates (because, unlike the checks written at the House Bank, our checks WOULD have bounced), and at a maximum might have cost you and me the ability to even have a checking account, or time in jail;
• Represented in the opening weeks of his campaign that he had locked up for 2006 the endorsements of everyone who had endorsed him in 2005, even though he did little or none of the work to confirm those endorsements.
• On balance, has no business running for Congress, especially as someone pretending to be “respected” and who intends to “restore dignity.” The fact that the offensive things described here occurred, and that some of them are still occurring, communicates the exact opposite of dignity and respect. I’d call it disgrace.

If there is a silver lining, it is this: I have no remaining reason not to reveal the results of various investigations done by myself and others into the one question Bob McEwen won’t discuss in any degree of detail: “What have you been up to during the thirteen years after you left Congress?” Mr. McEwen was (and to some extent still is) a busy man. Stay tuned.