Two recent polls had Brown leading for the Democratic Nomination. One of these put Brown with a narrow edge over Whitehouse, tied at 38% of likely voters supporting Brown and 36% supporting Whitehouse. The same poll had Brown leading Lincoln Chafee. The credit has been given to a statewide advertising campaign launched by the Brown campaign.
Despite NARAL Pro-Choice America's endorsement of Sen. Chafee, who voted against filibustering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, NARAL's President Emeritus and founder, Kate Michelman, is a strong Brown supporter. Michelman has hosted Brown fundraisers in New York and Washington and is the leader of Women for Matt Brown. She notes, "Matt is the only candidate who has been a strong and vocal advocate of equal justice for women and consistently stood up for a woman's right to choose."
But here it comes...
Democratic parties in Hawaii and two other states donated money to a Rhode Island candidate for the U.S. Senate and then received money from the candidate's supporters.
The U.S. Senate hopeful says asking donors who gave to his campaign to support out-of-state a parties was not an attempt to avoid finance laws.
Secretary of State Matt Brown persuaded four of his backers, who had already given him all they legally could, to donate money to Democratic state committees in Maine, Massachusetts and Hawaii that, days earlier, had poured $25,000 into his U.S. Senate campaign.
In early January, the three state parties got a total of $30,000 from a small coterie of Brown supporters who, by that time, had each already given him the $4,200 legal limit for an individual contributor.
Brown previously acknowledged asking one maxed-out contributor -- Richard Bready, CEO of the Providence-based Nortek -- to send $5,000 to the Massachusetts party and $6,000 each to the Maine and Hawaii parties.
In an effort to quell the controversy, Brown also promised two Fridays ago to return all of the state party contributions.
But questions remained, and yesterday Brown disclosed for the first time that he and his national finance director, Ashley Flanagan, wrested thousands more for the Massachusetts and Maine parties from Jeanne Lavine of Lexington, Mass., and from Sempra Energy Trading president David Messer and his wife, Barbara Duberstein, of Greenwich, Conn. Link to story, registration required
If Matt Brown hoped that his silence would make the story of his fundraising fiasco go away, he was wrong. Realizing this, Brown mounted a defense this week in the papers and on talk radio.
To make matters worse for Brown, Feds should investigate shady political donations appeared in a Hawaiian paper calling for a federal investigation of his campaign fundraising.
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