Just when you thought that Runaway Sue Kelly couldn't get any more desperate, she rolls out her latest advertsising campaign, which I heard on WCBS Newsradio 88, a major radio station here in the New York metro area. As noted in some of the comments in recent diaries on this race, Sue's big gun-slinging charge is -- wait for it -- that John Hall invests in mutual funds and doesn't know what stocks are in those funds, which would make him like the overwhelming majority of the 90 million Americans who own mutual funds.
Last week, during a Cablevision debate (there's a brief clip
here), Sue first brought up John Hall's audacity of buying and forgetting the stocks that are owned by the mutual fund, which happens to be Fidelity Magellan, a gigantic fund owned by many millions of Americans. The issue has gotten some play in the local media (see
here and
here) though as you can see it's been more than a bit skeptical of Sue's claims.
But the radio ads are another story. Typical scary music and baseless charges that as soon as I heard it, prompted me to head over to Opensecrets and check out Sue's own extensive holdings. Here's what I found after only a few minutes:
Sue Kelly owns American International Group, which earlier this year, reached a $1.64 Billion settlement with Eliot Spitzer over accounting fraud and other issues. Kind of makes one wonder why Sue never poked around in AIG, given that she chairs the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, but perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she owns as much as $100,000 of AIG stock, according to her latest financial disclosure form.
Sue also owns as much as $100,000 worth of Bed, Bath & Beyond stock, which on Oct. 10, announced that the federal Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the company over its stock options practices dating back to 1993. Oddly enough, Sue's committee has yet to hold a hearing on this growing problem, even though the Wall Street Journal first disclosed the problem back in March.
Then there's Ed's $50,000 investment in Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae, which has been the subject of multiple federal investigations, though none launched by Sue Kelly.
If Kelly wants to spend all her time and money on this, we're quite sure that the folks at take19 can continue coming up with more examples of her own conflicts over the next 7 days. But shouldn't a 12-year incumbent be out there touting her record of achievement instead of routing around through John Hall's mutual fund investments?