Ed Whitfield's Dirty Lobbyist Dinners

It's no coincidence that the two safest congressional seats in Kentucky are held by the two most corrupt repugs in the state.

Over the past two years, deep-pocketed donors to Kentucky Republican Rep. Ed Whitfield helped the Hopkinsville lawmaker and his guests enjoy $24,000 worth of meals at the posh Beverly Hills Hotel, where Hollywood television and movie industry executives schmooze over drinks.

Donors also chipped in $27,000 to help Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Somerset, and his associates sit in the shadows of the legendary twin spires as they watched horse races at a Churchill Downs fund-raiser.

Through both lawmakers’ leadership political action committees — funds established by a member of Congress to support other candidates — lobbyists and such industry leaders as AT&T and Lockheed Martin contributed roughly half a million dollars to the two congressmen. They in turn hosted lavish fund-raisers, according to Federal Election Commission records and an analysis by ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative-journalism organization.

In 2007, the House and Senate banned lawmakers from taking gifts from lobbyists and associated companies. But donors can still give to leadership PACs.

Lawmakers can make direct contributions to federal and non-federal candidates, fund independent expenditures to advocate for or against a particular candidate, and pay for operational expenses such as travel related to maintaining the PAC and raising money.

Campaign funds, which are governed under different FEC guidelines, can’t be spent for personal use by a candidate and his or her campaign committee.

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“Even if it is for fund-raising, it is a corrupting practice to begin with because you’re saying, ‘I, as a member of Congress, am going to tap into my special influence to help colleagues.’ Why not give the money directly to the candidate?” said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center. The money shouldn’t be “used to pad your lifestyle and use it to travel around the country to pay for travel when you don’t want to open up a campaign account to do so.”

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Earlier this year, the FEC sent a letter to House and Senate leadership recommending that the personal use of leadership PAC funds be prohibited.

To date, the FEC has received no response.

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Five of the eight members of the Kentucky congressional delegation have leadership PACs. Of that group, all but Whitfield donated at least 50 percent or more of the funds raised to other candidates.

Read the whole thing.

Whitfield, by the way, does not live in Hopkinsville, a city in Kentucky's First Congressional District. He lives in Florida.