This site has been conspicuously silent on the Tim Mahoney scandal (at least, I haven't seen anything, and I check Daily Kos out several times a day). Turns out, this could be one pile of crap that gets a poopy smell all over the DCCC.
Tim Mahoney was a Republican until Mark Foley started harrassing congressional pages. When Foley fell, Mahoney saw his opportunity.
Meanwhile, schoolteacher and anti-war activitist David Lutrin, believing he had the approval of the Democratic Party, began campaigning. At some point, the DCCC and Rahm Emanuel told him they were putting their clout behind a multi-millionaire that no one in Dem circles had heard of.
The Bradenton Herald Tribune has the story:
Lutrin quit the race six months after Mahoney filed to run, saying the pressure from party leaders was too great. Mahoney won the primary without opposition and went on to defeat Republican Joe Negron to win the seat.
Lutrin is not alone in his criticism.
Sarasota attorney Jan Schneider said the Democratic committee did the same thing to her, breaking its pledge to remain neutral in a primary in 2006, and instead backing retired banker Christine Jennings. Like Mahoney, Jennings is a former Republican who had never been involved in local Democratic politics until she ran for office.
"They're totally about the money," Schneider said in an earlier interview about the DCCC.
Now, the Democratic Party is facing a scandal it should not have had to deal with. (The Dollar Bill Jefferson scandal broke a long, uninterrupted string of Republican corruption news.)
According to the article, Lutrin says Mahoney tried to buy him out of the race. Apparently, self-funding candidates are high on the DCCC's list of candidates it is likely to support.
DCCC spokeswoman Kyra Jennings said the committee looks for candidates who can win the general election and who reflect the makeup of the district they are running in. She said one factor is the ability to put together the resources to win, but so, too, is identifying the political support for a candidate in a district.
Thank God for the Netroots' support of candidates like Andrew Rice and Darcy Burner. Without our support, they would never raise the cash to be competitive enough for the DCCC to get in their corners.