House Majority Leader John Boehner – The Carpetbagger Report

Before we talk about the results, this is hilarious.

House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting.

Republicans can’t even run their own elections in a fair and reliable way. No word on whether Katherine Harris was doing the counting.

Of course, the results themselves are the important news. Once they did the first ballot, Rep. Roy Blunt (Mo.) led with 110, but fell short of the 117 votes needed to secure the post. Rep. John Boehner (Ohio) was second with 79 votes; Rep. John Shadegg (Ariz.) was third with 40; and Rep. Jim Ryun (KS) received two write-in votes.

With no majority, it went to a second ballot — where the surprise happened.

Rep . John Boehner (OH) wins the House majority leader’s race on a second ballot. Boehner took 122; Rep. Roy Blunt (MO) received 109 votes.

Boehner picked up all of Rep. John Shadegg’s (AZ) support. Blunt actually lost one vote from the first round of balloting.

At 1:55 p.m., Boehner was talking to GOP colleagues and is expected to speak to the press shortly.

I’m actually kind of disappointed; I had a great post ready to go on Blunt. Oh well.

Well, it was building off an item TNR’s Ryan Lizza wrote a few weeks ago, with a list of reasons Blunt would be a gift to Dems.

* Abramoff. Blunt signed three letters to Interior Secretary Gale Norton asking her to stop the Choctaw Indians from opening a casino that would have competed with the tables of Abramoff’s Indian clients. Blunt personally met with Abramoff or his fellow lobbyists (the records are unclear) when Abramoff was working the Mariana Islands issue. Gregg Hartley, Blunt’s former chief of staff and his man on K Street–his Tony Rudy–recruited Abramoff to lobbying giant Cassidy & Associates after Abramoff left Greenberg Traurig in disgrace. Best of all, and most likely to be coming to a TV screen near you in the form of a 30-second ad, Blunt had “friend of owner status” at Abramoff’s Signatures restaurant, meaning he ate for free.

* K Street Project. Blunt was DeLay’s liaison to K Street–he was DeLay’s DeLay.

* Alexander Strategy Group. Blunt was closely associated with the now disbanded firm run by ex-DeLay aides who are at the center of the Abramoff investigation. A detailed report put together by Public Citizen notes that “Ten of Blunt’s biggest contributors have hired the Alexander Strategy Group as their lobbying firm” and that the firm did some $500,000 in fundraising and consulting work for Blunt.

* Duke Cunningham. Blunt reportedly flew four times on the corporate jets of companies run by Brent Wilkes, the defense contractor accused of bribing Representative Cunningham with millions of dollars in cash and gifts.

* Pay to play. Blunt once mysteriously added a provision beneficial to tobacco giant Altria, for whom his wife and son are lobbyists, to a Homeland Security bill. (It was removed when it became public.)

* US Family Network. According to Public Citizen: USFN was the recipient of a $500,000 soft money check from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) in October 1999, whose finance chair was Abigail Perlman, who became Blunt’s wife in 2003. The money was solicited by Buckham, then a USFN contractor. The USFN subsequently made a secret $300,000 transfer to Americans for Economic Growth, which used the money to run commercials attacking Democratic congressional candidates. In 2004, the FEC fined the NRCC $280,000 in connection with its transfer to the USFN.

Boener has some unseemly items on his record, but it’s just not the same.