After reading Marty
Kovarik's sworn statement for the Jim Oberweis campaign last week I came to the
conclusion that his story has more holes in it than Dick Cheney's hunting
buddy.
Kovarik was Judy Baar
Topinka's deputy treasurer in 1995. He was her Senate office chief of staff for
several years before that.
Kovarik approached the
Oberweis campaign a couple weeks ago with a long story about alleged corruption
in Topinka's office. The Oberweis campaign took a sworn statement from him.
Oberweis is now trumpeting
Kovarik's statement as "vindication" of one of his TV attack ads.
Tying your credibility to someone else is always risky, but doing so without
first vetting that person's story is reckless to the point of insanity. Let's
hit the high points:
* Kovarik's claim about
who ordered the shredding of a hotel loan-related document is in serious
question.
Kovarik claims Topinka
ordered the shredding when her spokesman Jim Howard called Topinka's home.
Howard claimed years ago that he told Kovarik about how the document had been
discovered while he was in Kovarik's office and claimed that Kovarik
immediately ordered it shredded.
Kovarik told the State
Journal-Register's Bernie Schoenburg that he ordered the document shredded. But
he said in his sworn statement that he would never shred a state document.
In any case, the document
was never shredded. Topinka released it to the media.
* Kovarik claims in his
statement that he wasn't in on that controversial 1995 hotel loan deal with
Republican fundraiser Bill Cellini's business partners.
"I was not in on any
part of the deal except that I knew what had happened at the end," Kovarik
swore. At the time, though, Kovarik was described in press reports as an
integral party in the negotiations, and he told the Associated Press of
meetings he had held with hotel negotiators. Kovarik did not return two phone
messages and an e-mail message last week.
* Oberweis has been trying
to tie Topinka to Bill Cellini for weeks. Kovarik's statement seemed to put
everything together, but his story has been completely challenged.
Kovarik claims that
Cellini introduced Topinka at Republican Day events at the Illinois State Fair.
Cellini "religiously introduced Judy Baar Topinka," Kovarik claimed,
"I mean, it was always, you know, my good friend, senator from the 22nd
District and the next treasurer of the State of Illinois." Kovarik claimed
that Topinka would then come up to the dais, "And of course they would
exchange a hug, and -- and in her usual manner she would give him a kiss on the
cheek or wherever he wanted to be kissed."
Trouble is, Cellini
apparently never did any such thing. Anyone who knows Cellini knows that he's a
back of the room type of guy, if he shows up at all. Cellini flatly denied ever
introducing Topinka at such an event, and Irv Smith, the former Sangamon County
Republican Party Chairman, said he couldn't ever recall anything like that
happening. Other local Republicans backed them up.
Kovarik also identifies
Cellini in his statement as the chairman of the Sangamon County GOP who
"owns and operates an asphalt paving company." Both statements are
false. * Kovarik specifically names three people in Topinka's former
legislative office who, he claimed, were ordered to do campaign work. Except
that one of those people was a political staffer paid with campaign funds.
Oops. The others deny they were ordered to do campaign work on state time or
that they did anything else improper and have threatened to sue Kovarik unless
the statement is retracted.
If Oberweis had questioned
the ethics of Topinka hiring an alleged boyfriend to be her deputy treasurer,
he might have been branded a cad but he would have made a good point. Her move,
if true, showed a lack of professionalism, to say the least. Instead, Oberweis
dragged out a smear that is almost laughable on its face.
But my favorite part (not)
of this whole thing is the little nugget in Oberweis' press release last week,
entitled: "Jim Oberweis vindicated for 'Take a Closer Look at Judy Baar
Topinka' ads.'"
Oberweis is quoted in the
release as saying: "Only Ms. Topinka's current confidant Nancy Kimme can
be said to have a relationship nearly as close as that between Mr. Kovarik and
Ms. Topinka."
Class. Real class