Earlier in the summer, the FBI launched an investigation into whether Republicans, and Del. Terry Kilgore, had improperly and possibly illegally offered former Democratic Sen. Phil Puckett a cushy job with the Tobacco Commission and a possible judgeship for his daughter if Phil could see his way to resigning his seat.
Now the other shoe has dropped, and it comes from the foot (or out of the mouth) of Paul Reagan, chief of staff to Gov. McAuliffe:
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s chief of staff left a voice-mail message for a Democrat who was on the verge of quitting the General Assembly in June, saying that the senator’s daughter might get a top state job if he stayed to support the governor’s push to expand Medicaid, according to descriptions from three people who heard the recording.
The transcript of Reagan’s voice mail reads:
“Hey Senator. This is Paul Reagan again. I just wanted to bounce one idea off you. I know there was a lot of frustration with your daughter, not, you know, getting a judgeship or something. if there’s something that we can do for her, I mean, you know, we have a couple of big agencies here that we still need agency heads. We could potentially, potentially, subject to approval of the governor and so forth, you know, the department of mines, minerals and energy could be available. So we would be very eager to accommodate her, if, if that would be helpful in keeping you in the senate. We, we would basically do anything. We just need you really, we need you for the rest of your term and beyond, but in the immediate future, we need you to help us get this Medicaid deal through and I think we’ve got a way to do it. So anyway, please let’s keep all this confidential. Call me 703-850—–. Thank you sir. Bye.”
Jim Hoeft has something about this story back in July.
Republicans will, understandably, jump on this. But their own ethical skirts aren’t clean in the Puckett affair. And I do not look for Democrats to walk back anything they said about Puckett or Republicans. That’s just how the game is played.
The FBI investigation into the GOP version of the Puckett bid is, apparently, ongoing. One would expect it to broaden to include Mr. Reagan. If not, then it has been a sham from the start.
FBI investigations alone are not going to clean up Trenton-on-the-James.
The political class has to do it. They have to be serious about it. And they have to do more than mouth assurances that they have placed their top men in charge of cleaning up the system.
The early line is that they are not serious. The Governor hamstrung his proposed an ethics commission almost immediately:
“I never could have envisioned … the absolute, I thought, despicable moves by a former Democratic senator, Phil Puckett, who resigned,” McAuliffe said Thursday morning during his “Ask the Governor” program on WRVA radio.
He said Puckett chose to “walk out” and in the end “he didn’t get the job he was going to get (and) his daughter didn’t get the judgeship.”
“I’m more disappointed than anything else,” McAuliffe said.
The governor called the actions of legislative commissions to benefit family members, as alleged with Kilgore and the tobacco commission, “totally unacceptable” and said, “We’re going to look at it.”
A politically stupid and unnecessary thing to say at the time, if one assumed the Governor actually wanted the General Assembly to take the commission’s work seriously. A deliciously hypocritical thing to have said in light of the latest news.
But perhaps this is all too cynical. We can hope that all sides, being exposed as crass hypocrites, may now be shamed into doing something worthwhile.
They could begin by spiking the golden pension parachutes legislators have granted themselves. This is the greatest gift in state government. And the most sleazy.
But that’s probably not on the table. Or even in the same building as the table.
What we are likely to get is more hand waving and more assurances that everything has changed…
Update
Paul Reagan has apologized for his phone call to Phil Puckett:
“In the fight to expand health care to uninsured Virginians, I was overzealous and acted with poor judgment,” McAuliffe chief of staff Paul Reagan said in a statement issued through the governor’s press office.
“I certainly regret this and will always try to achieve the high standards demanded by Governor McAuliffe.”
Right. We can all recall that Bob McDonnell issued a bizarre apology for his dealings with Jonnie Williams.
Yeah, the jury didn’t buy that one, either.
