Questions of ethics begin to surround Ben Loyola
By JR Hoeft | Thursday, October 29th, 2009 | PoliticsFirst…DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER!!! This is the last thing I want to be writing about right now, but CQ reported it, it’s Hampton Roads, we’re known as a conservative blog, so it’s kinda something we have to mention.
Apparently 2nd District Congressional Candidate Ben Loyola’s self-funding of a half-million bucks a few weeks back (that we all sort of collectively went “huh?” on) is already under greater scrutiny.
CQ reports that some ethics groups are all over Loyola for what they call a questionable sale of a portion of his business to a Swedish investor.
Watchdog organizations say the sale of a division of Ben Loyola’s business, Loyola Enterprises, to a Swedish company could lead to questions about whether it represents an illegal campaign contribution. Loyola also must explain why the division sold for far more than he had estimated the value of his business, they said.
Loyola’s campaign said competition drove up the sale price and no violations occurred.
The groups said the case deserves, at least, an investigation.
Do we really need this right now?
Loyola Campaign response
This is nothing more than a pointless attack from liberal special interest front groups pushing their own agenda, pathetically intended to taint Ben and push him out of the way for a weak Republican candidate in the 2nd. Loyola is the GOP’s best chance to defeat Nye in the 2nd and the liberals know that, hence their made-up attacks on him and his business.Public Citizen is widely known for promoting Obamacare and CREW has a long history of specifically attacking Republicans. There is absolutely no merit to their politically motivated claims.
According to University of Wisconsin Business Professor Terrance Maxwell, “Values can change dramatically over time based on a lot of factors; just look at the stock market in the last year,” Maxwell said. “And in the [case] of a privately held company, no one can be sure what the value really is until the company is actually sold.” (Source of quote: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/65081-rep-nye-challengers-sale-catches-ethics-groups-ire)
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About the author
Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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12 Responses to "Questions of ethics begin to surround Ben Loyola"
First of all, what the hell do ethics groups in DC know about Loyola’s business or the valuation of it. Since when do we start investigating Americans for selling their businesses? Sounds like BS to me.
Not a great way for a political newcomer and relative unknown to be introduced to voters in Hampton Roads. Anytime you have “illegal campaign contribution” and GOP in the same sentence it’s bad. Anyone remember the public outcry for the Republican Party when Duke Cunningham delt with this issue?
I don’t know this Ben guy, but something seems a little off on this deal. Did someone overpay for his company because they knew he was running for office?
I certainly hope nothing unethical took place. That would be a real shame to have the race start off that way. We are so hungry for leaders with integrity, what we need is for all the candidates to run their campaigns honorably. As always, the truth will prevail.
Until someone can find a smoking gun here, there’s not much to this story.
1. Is Hexagon a new entrant into this sector of the U.S. market? If so, was paying a premium for an already-established business a more sure-footed way of doing it?
2. Why would a company from socialist Sweden want to make an illegal campaign contribution to a conservative Republican?
This episode is dissapointing. The focus of this primary needs to be on Glen Nye and his lack of leadership as a lapdog for Nancy Pelosi. We need leaders of the highest integrity. The Loyola campaign has us off on the wrong foot once again.
Add this to backtracking on their pledge not to raise $ during Bob’s election and a pattern might be developing. We need candidates ready to bring their A game to take out Glenn Nye.
Hexagon is a world-leading supplier of systems for measurement of objects in one, two or three dimensions. The measurement systems measure with great precision and rapidly provide access to large amounts of measurement data. For the customer, this means greater efficiency and productivity, improved quality and significant material and cost savings in the production process.
Loyola Spatial Systems is in basically in the same business. GIS is amazing stuff and I have a lot of respect for Loyola for building such a large business out of it.
Apparently, Ben must be doing something right, if the liberals are already attacking him. It sounds like they are a little nervous to me.
Go Ben!
Any astroturfing going on here JR?
“But his personal financial disclosure report, which was filed in early August, estimated his net worth at the time at less than $1.5 million — and possibly much less.”
That may raise some questions; how does he sell a PORTION of his company for ‘several million dollars’ in a horrendous economy when the total value of all of his assets, including the entire company, is valued at less than $1.5 million?
Either he had intentionally deceived the value of his assets on the Financial Disclosure Statement or he was so sloppy in his accounting methods that it calls into question his ability to be straight with voters.
The financial disclosure statement is filed with the House Ethics committee and fraud on such a document is a federal offense. So yes, this is serious, and shooting the messenger is not the proper response.
“But his personal financial disclosure report, which was filed in early August, estimated his net worth at the time at less than $1.5 million — and possibly much less.”
If he only had a net worth of this amount, how could he possibly afford to live in the mansion he built? He used to have a link on his company’s “construction division” web page that showed the whole photo history blog of his mansion being built. His company was evidently the general contractor. I think he said it was something like 14,000sq. ft.! Loyola was in nearly every picture. It appeared to me that all he did for about three years was work on his house.
It seems as soon as he started his public bid for election, he took down the web site that flaunted his house. So what is up with that? One minute, you are a private citizen showing the world the monument you built to yourself, the next minute you are a public candidate for office and you take down the house web site. Why?
The blog was, I guess, to highlight his construction division’s capabilities. Why would he now want to delete that from his company web site?
Don’t get me wrong, Loyola is not the ONLY one out there with questionable ethics. The political pool is full of them. I just don’t want to see ANY of them in Washington. It just appears to me that he has portrayed different views of himself depending on who is trying to impress.
As the saying goes, “follow the money trail.” If he built a mansion, that’s where the money went.
This is really just your typcial political B-ll S–t, We need Ben Loyola for the 2nd district, because he is without any doubt the strongest cantidate. Just look a the experience difference between him and the other rep. choice. I am not putty anyone down but Mr. Loyola is extremely accomplished and this is nothing more that nonsense. We need a strong cantidate to get rid of Mr. Nye, who is no more than a Pelosi lapdog.
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