{"id":5597,"date":"2005-10-21T10:35:53","date_gmt":"2005-10-21T14:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5597"},"modified":"2005-10-21T10:35:53","modified_gmt":"2005-10-21T14:35:53","slug":"if-theyre-spending-that-kind-of-money-theyre-spending-it-to-protect-themselves-from-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/if-theyre-spending-that-kind-of-money-theyre-spending-it-to-protect-themselves-from-something\/","title":{"rendered":"‘If they’re spending that kind of money, they’re spending it to protect themselves from something’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The questions about Harriet Miers have been piling up, but nearly all have been about her lack of qualifications, her sycophantic tendencies, her lack of a record, and her unknown beliefs. Today, however, we learn of a slightly different question that might be even more difficult to answer.<\/p>\n

The AP reported that Miers’ law firm collected huge windfalls in legal fees<\/a> from Bush’s Texas gubernatorial campaigns, most of it for work done during his 1998 re-election bid. At first blush, this doesn’t appear to mean much. Miers represented Bush, Bush needed legal advice over the course of a campaign, and so Miers was compensated for her work, right?<\/p>\n

Not exactly. When Bush first ran for governor in 1994, Miers’ firm collected $7,000 in legal fees from Bush. Four years later, that number went up. A lot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Campaign records show Bush’s Texas gubernatorial campaigns paid Miers a total of $163,000 in legal fees, most of it for work done during the future president’s 1998 re-election bid. […]<\/p>\n

The 1998 totals … are extremely large for campaign legal work in Texas, an expert said.<\/p>\n

“I’m baffled,” said Randall B. Wood, a partner in the Austin firm of Ray, Wood and Bonilla, and former director of Common Cause of Texas. “I’ve never seen that kind of money spent on a campaign lawyer. It’s unprecedented.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To put it in further perspective, Bush spent almost as much in legal fees in running for governor in 1998 as he did in running for president in 2004.<\/p>\n

And no one knows why. That is, at least not yet.
\n
\nIn fact, let’s add some more perspective to this. Bush ran up unprecedented legal fees in the midst of a gubernatorial race in which he barely had to campaign at all<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Former Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro, a Democrat who was defeated handily by Bush in the 1998 campaign, said both the amount and the timing of the payments are curious. In late September, when Miers’ firm received the first of two $70,000 payments, Mauro said he trailed Bush in the polls by 35 points.<\/p>\n

“If they’re spending that kind of money,” said Mauro, now an Austin attorney who estimates he spent less than $20,000 on legal fees during the campaign, “they’re spending it to protect themselves from something.”<\/b> (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To its credit, the AP touches on the question that had to be asked.<\/p>\n

Dana Perrino, a White House spokeswoman, said the legal fees to Miers’ firm were for routine campaign work, but declined to be more specific. Presidential aides declined to say whether Miers ever worked on researching Bush’s past, such as his military record.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What do you know, Miers’ nomination can<\/i> get worse. I stand corrected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The questions about Harriet Miers have been piling up, but nearly all have been about her lack of qualifications, her sycophantic tendencies, her lack of a record, and her unknown beliefs. Today, however, we learn of a slightly different question that might be even more difficult to answer. The AP reported that Miers’ law firm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}