Friday of this week TX-22 GOP Congressional nominee Pete Olson held a press conference to deny documentation demonstrating that he had voted in Connecticut while being registered in Virginia. Virginia law says dual registration is a felony, and the Lone Star Project’s Matt Angle had laid information from official Connecticut and Virginia records with the Fairfax County prosecutor showing that Olson had indeed voted in a special election in Newtown borough in Connecticut while registered in Virginia on August 12, 2003.
My dailykos diary at dawn Friday omitted quoting incumbent Democratic Congressman Nick Lampson, who won TX-22 from former Republican House leader Tom DeLay’s machine in 2006. Taking my life in my hands (because of the AP's sanguinary and punitive repudiation of the fair-use doctrine for its words), I will tell you that the AP reported Lampson as saying, "This district was embarrassed when Tom DeLay decided he was above the law ... so I think any allegation like this should definitely be investigated. No one is above the law."
Conversation with Matt Angle left me with more curiosity than I started with. At first, it was just about GOP Congressional candidate Pete Olson’s recorded exercise of the voting franchise in two separate states. But by the end of it, I was beginning to wonder about the Houston Chronicle’s non-coverage of the issue.
Angle, a former Congressional staffer himself, is far too canny to impeach the Chronicle’s good name, and may indeed be one of those optimists who does not believe it needs or deserves impeaching. Saying he has given Chronicle reporter Alan Bernstein all the material he possesses on the case, Angle didn’t sound too worried about the Chronicle ultimately doing its job when I spoke to him.
Still, all Pete Olson’s different stories seem to come down to one thing. It’s the classic, "Who ya gonna believe? Me, or your lying eyes?"
There it is, right there in black and white on an official Newtown borough voter sheet, Peter G. Olson’s name crossed off as having voted in Connecticut on August 12, 2003, timed right between the Virginia primary and general elections in which he also voted.
Take his denial at his Friday press conference, also not covered in Saturday’s Chronicle. According to fortbendnow.com’s John Pape, Olson stated, "Let me be perfectly clear – I never voted in person in Connecticut, I never owned property in Connecticut and I never lived in Connecticut."
Now that looks more like a perfect non-denial denial to me. Pape called it an "adamant denial," which I take to be an insult to all hard-working diamonds everywhere. It’s a non-denial. Why? Because on the Connecticut voter registration card of 1996 which enabled him to vote there from his parents’ address, he has checked the boxes that say he wants absentee ballots for all general, primary and special elections mailed to his address in Virginia.
This point about Olson’s having voted absentee, thus rendering the whole alibi question both spurious and dubious, is particularly well covered at the Fort Bend County blog Half-Empty.
Oddly, there have been more stories in the El Paso Times and the Austin American Statesman (2 AP stories each) than there have been in the Houston Chronicle (zero) on the evidence of Olson’s double voting. Maybe Bernstein’s editors are saving up a big story for Sunday. Friday he wrote about Culberson v Skelly in TX-7, so he’s a busy man. (Houston has parts of eight congressional districts, though only two of them are considered "real races," 7 and 22, and Bernstein has to cover all of them.)
The Burnt Orange Report blog has done as much work as fortbendnow.com to understand this story, and both of them have out-done the Chronicle, which is right up there with the entertainment weekly Houston Press. Both Chronicle and Press have so far ignored it. Now I wouldn’t want to imply, state or suggest for even a moment that the Chronicle’s political coverage is not absolutely perfect -- for a given value of perfect. The local reporting of all multimilliondollar media institutions (the Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times and Chicago Tribune come to mind) is of course exactly like the Lord Chancellor’s position in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe: "The Law is the true embodiment / Of everything that’s excellent. / It has no kind of fault or flaw, / And I, my Lords, embody the Law." They can do no wrong, because no one else can do any worse.
Angle said his lawyer had suggested filing charges only in one jurisdiction. That was Virginia because its law clearly states you cannot be registered, much less vote, anywhere else. (The old Commonwealth still has that colonial, plantation mentality of acting like it is the only jurisdiction that matters.) Angle wanted to present only the clearest possible case and, although the voting took place in Connecticut, that is still a Virginia offense. Angle suspects, however, that the Fairfax County DA (called Commonwealth’s Attorneys there) will be in touch with the prosecutorial authorities in Newtown borough, Fairfield County and at the State of Connecticut to see what they want to do about the evidence.
Possibly the Chronicle’s editors are so boggled by the number of explanations that have been given by Olson and his spokespersons that they cannot hew a straight path throught the underbrush. Burnt Orange Report’s Matt Glazer has laid four of Olson’s excuses out for our bemusement. (It could be worse. Lampson’s spokesman says there are six explanations that have been given by Olson or surrogates. I am trying to get that list.)
One suggestion Angle made when I talked to him was intriguing. He thought it possible that a friend of Olson's in Newtown really cared about the special election's outcome and asked Pete if he could vote in his stead. (That would make Olson's denial of having voted technically, though not legally or morally, true. I guess if you are a Republican you have to take your half-truths where you can find them.) Now, that would be a different kind of voter fraud under Connecticut law, but it doesn't erase the Virginia violation. By the strict terms of Virginia law, failing to cancel your registration in another state simultaneously with registering in Virginia is a felony, whether you ever vote in the other jurisdiction at all or not. Ah, isn't strict constructionism wonderful.
This is one of my favorite Lyndon B. Johnson stories, and its metaphysical truth is in no way diminished by its having been publicized by Hunter S. Thompson who, whatever his many and manifest failings, knew how to tell a story. Back during one of his early races for the House, in which he served from 1937 to 1949, Johnson was running about 10 points ahead. He knew his opponent was desperate. Johnson called his campaign manager and told him to set up a press conference for just before lunch on a slow news day to accuse his deflated opponent, a pig farmer, of having routine carnal knowledge of his sows despite the pleas of his wife and children. His campaign manager was shocked. "We can’t say that, Lyndon," he supposedly said. "You know that it isn’t true." "Of course it’s not!" Johnson barked. "But let’s make the son of a bitch have to deny it!"
Sleazeball though he personally was, Johnson was a first-class practical psychologist. In this story, LBJ wants his opponent as Huck Finn’s Pap wants Judge Thatcher to do, "Make him pungle." That is, have to spend time and energy defending himself so he can’t be attacking. And thus he who is behind, remains behind.
Current polls in TX-22 are hard to find, but the summary sites all show the race as neck-and-neck. And Nick Lampson didn’t set up the Lone Star Project to find Olson’s extra voting documentation, despite desperate charges from Olson’s camp that he did so. Still, it must be galling to Olson to have to spend time rejecting the clear implication that he, like Tom DeLay before him, had so much contempt for election law that he violated it thinking he would never get caught or punished for it.
Olson would much rather be pushing the talking points written out for him in Washington about how Republican tax cuts for the rich mean Lampson is a high-tax socialist, or how Lampson’s endorsement by the NRA means Lampson is against the Second Amendment.
Lyndon’s savage satisfaction at misdirecting his opponent’s energies toward resisting a false charge had to be what Olson sought when he argued this week that not finding Lampson’s wife’s voter registration in Fort Bend County must, must, must mean that Lampson didn’t live within the district! Sorry, not as good as a pig story. In fact, that pig had no lipstick, come to think of it.
I should record that Alan Bernstein was absolutely correct about DCCC involvement. They put out a fine 30 second ad Friday -- which brownsox showcased on the front page of dailykos Friday in a House race roundup headed by the imploding Michelle Bachmann -- but which bears embedding here.