So....

.....let's take a look at the last two people in political circles who have employed Judd Legum.

One was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who of course spent most of the 1990's engrossed in one scandal or another....or another....or another. Legum worked as the Research Director of her Presidential Campaign, and if you remember towards the end of the campaign it was supporters of Clinton's campaign that first gave worth to the asinine birther movement.

Next, Legum (as we noted) went to work for New York Governor David Paterson. Paterson, of course, admitted to having an affair with a subordinate while serving as Lt. Governor and ended his campaign for a full term today due to the fact that he is being investigated for accusations that he abused his power to protect an aide accused of assaulting a woman last October.

So if you take a look at the scorecard, the last two political candidate employers of Judd Legum are two people who embody the picture of Democrats constant embroiled in scandal. With the people Legum works for, I think we really need to be questioning the fitness of his judgment and his fitness for office. Legum has shown to be a bad judge of character considering these (and others) he has decided to associate himself with.

Sadly.....it also makes me wonder what skeletons are in Judd Legum's attic.

Judd Legum's Philosophy of Governance

Judd Legum, the out-of-state funded Democrat for Delegate in District 30, also has a side gig in addition to be a candidate and a trial lawyer as the Chairman of the Market House and City Dock Committee of Annapolis Mayor Josh Cohen's transition team. And buried deep in this Capital story about the failure of the Market House rehabilitation project to get on track are Legum's thoughts about how Market House should operate:

The committee recommended the formation of a commission to determine exactly who will be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Market House and what businesses will move into it. It's more important to reflect the character of Annapolis than for the property to turn a profit, Legum said.

Emphasis mine.

So, just to be clear, Judd Legum has absolutely no problem whatsoever with Annapolis City Taxpayers operating an ostensibly for-profit enterprise that competes with local private businesses for customers and revenues operating at a loss. That of course would mean that city taxpayers could see themselves footing the bill for more of Market House's operating costs than would be legitimately necessary; a philosophy that has already failed at the state level.

In Judd Legum's world, soaking the taxpayers for the ineffectiveness of government is a perfectly legitimate position to take. We need to make sure that Judd Legum doesn't bring his backward philosophy of governance to the State House next year...

Keep one eye on New York

Looks like the New York Times is readying a scandalous story centered on New York Governor David Paterson that will likely be published any day now.

Why does this matter to Maryland. If you remember, the Paterson campaigned hired one Judd Legum to do their dirty work for them.

It will be interesting to see what scandals Paterson has gotten himself in. Then the question becomes this: what did Legum know, and when did he know it. We already know about Legum's lack of guts. But if Legum knew Paterson was up to no good and took his money anyway, it will speak volumes towards his character....

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 01-30-2010

PS: This is comedy folks. A serious point being made in an unserious way. If you are offended by this......ligthen up.

Judd Legum is Gutless, and other facts of life

I'm going to be straight about it: Judd Legum (D-Soros) has no balls.

Word on the street was that Judd Legum was mad about my post detailing the truth behind his campaign cash haul last week. So instead of manning up and saying so himself on his own blog, his own website, or his own Twitter feed like any normal person would, Legum decided to put the "yellow" in "Yellow-Dog Democrat" and recruited a flunky, Anne Arundel County Democratic Party Chairman Stephen Thibodeau, to do it for him four days after the fact with a post up on Maryland Politics Watch.

Yeah, it's real scintillating stuff too, made more impressive by the fact that Thibodeau in his pathetic defense of the feckless Legum concedes virtually every major point that I was trying to make about Legum being a product of out of state Democratic interests.

The one point that Thibodeau really really wanted to pounce on was this:

Well, it’s only beyond comprehension if one doesn’t realize that the Thayaparans are part of Legum’s family. His in-laws, to be precise. Had Griffiths bothered to do a simple Google search of “Judd Legum Thayaparan”, he would have found several references to Judd Legum and Roshini Thayaparan. Roshini is Judd’s wife. So either Griffiths didn’t bother to check something basic – that the donations in questions were from his family – or Griffiths did in fact know and thought it would make great copy to insinuate something shady was going on. Either way, bad form, Brian.

Apparently, Stephen Thibodeau has a magic Google which some connects the word wife and/or marriage to the two names. Because I searched the names four days ago. I searched them again today. And, of course, there is no connection to the casual observer. I would refer you to the extensive biography of Legum located on Legum's campaign webiste....except one doesn't exist on Legum's website.

So, to summarize Thibodeau's main points:

• Raising money from out of state is OK if it's family.
• Dancing around the fact that a number of small contributions came from a small number of people donating multiple times is OK.
• Rasing 71.2% of your campaign funds for a local race is OK.
• Don't look at us, look at Ron George!
  

I guess we now know why Anne Arundel County has a Republican Majority....

(And as an aside; during this filing period, Delegate Ron George had four donations made from out of state. Four. That means that 98.5% of Ron George's total donations and 98.3% of all dollars raisedwere from Maryland donors)

Again, I point out that Thibodeau concedes every major point that I made. And to boot, he refuses to deny that Legum's campaign, while not taking money from state PACs and lobbyists, is raking in big money from Washington-based, federal lobbyists who are part of the Clinton machine.

The funniest thing about this however, is the fact that poor old Judd Legum is angry because somebody dared to question. And let's not forget here, that Legum is a product of the hypercompetitive political environment from the Clinton Campaign Machine. Apparently, Judd Legum can dish out the heat, but he can't take it when the spotlight is foisted upon himself.

I like to think of it as a football fan who wants to criticize the decision making of the team's quarterback; sure it looks easy when you're watching it on TV. But I can tell you from stepping is as a quarterback for my social league touch football team that it's a whole different animal when it's you scrambling around in the pocket.

And to top it all off, Judd Legum didn't even have the intestinal fortitude to respond himself. He had to find somebody else to do his heavy lifting for him. So, so sad.

Here's some advice Judd; if you want to represent the people of District 30, you're going to have to make the tough decisions on your own. You can't get other people to fight your battles for you in those time when you curl up in the fetal position, suck your thumb, and act like a lily-livered coward. If you don't grow a spine, you're just going to make more of an joke out of yourself than you already have.....

Next time you need to say something....say it yourself.

The Truth behind Judd Legum's Fundraising

Liberal darling/mudslinger/trial lawyer/factually challenged blogger Judd Legum is telling anybody who will listen that he raised over $65,000 for his campaign for the House of Delegates in District 30. It's on his blog. There was a press release. It was tweeted. It's all over the place like he won an award or something.

Of course, what do the numbers actually mean....

For starters, let's take a look at this claim from Legum:

I was extremely pleased with all the early financial support to my campaign. Eighty-five percent of contributions were $100 or less and we didn’t accept a penny from special interest PACs.

Which of course depends on your definition of contribution. When you talk about the actual number of contributors, then yes of Legum's 538 total contributors, 459 of them made donations of $100.00 or less. That was a total amount, however, of $22,644.32. Of Legum's total dollars raised during the 2009 filing period, only barely one-third (34.6 percent) were raised from these "small" donors.

Except that's not really the case either. For example, an Emily Legum of Annapolis made seven different $50 contributions during the period, for an aggregate total of $350. Debbie Berger Fox of Washington, DC made two seperate $100 contributions. David Cho of New York City made 8 seperate contributions that total $220.47 in addition to a contribution of $250. Nancy Coley of Annapolis made three contributions under the $100 "limit" that aggregated $175. JoAnn Escobosa of Arnold made three $50 contributions. And it goes on like this. So while the number of "contributions" of less than $100 is accurate, the aggregated total comes from a smaller pool than Legum's press release would imply.

And speaking of contributions, where did these contributions come from? Glad you asked:

• Arizona: 3
• California: 38
• Colorado: 1
• District of Columbia: 111
• Florida: 4
• Georgia: 4
• Iowa: 1
• Illinois: 7
• Kansas: 1
• Kentucky: 1
• Louisiana: 2
• Maine: 1
  
• Maryland: 231
• Massachusetts: 13
• Michigan: 1
• Minnesota: 2
• Missouri: 2
• New Jersey: 7
• New York: 37
• North Carolina: 1
• Ohio: 4
• Oregon: 3
• Pennsylvania: 16
• Rhode Island: 1
• South Carolina: 3
• Texas: 5
• Virginia: 26
• Vermont: 1
• Washington: 9
• West Virgnia: 1
• Wisconsin: 1

So to try and make the point for you here, only 42.9% of Legum's contributors live in the state of Maryland. We're not even talking about his district. We're talking about the state of Maryland.

Which now leads the question of how much of Legum's money comes from Maryland and how much comes from out of state. Glad you asked, because of Legum's total amount raised only $18,908 comes from in state donors. That means that only 28.8 percent of Judd Legum's money has been donated by Marylanders. As a matter of fact a nearly equal amount of Legum's funds were raised from residents of the District of Columbia ($18,610).

And that leaves us with the question of the who is giving money to Judd Legum. Well, the list contains a who's who of federal lobbyists with ties to the Clintion Political Machine. You can corraborate the list here. Some of the "dignitaries" include:"

• Disgraced former Annapolis Mayoral Nominee Zina Pierre, whose campaign appartus donated $250 to Legum as the scandal around her campaign exploded, and then gave a personal $100 donation in November.
• Hillary Clinton apparatchik Howard Wolfson maxed out for a $4,000 donation.
  
• Bill Clinton flunky John Podesta, the former White House Chief of Staff who was instrumental in the Marc Rich pardon scandal and now spends qualtiy time as a UFO-truther.
• Patti Solis Doyle, another prominent Clintonista, donated $1,000.
• Former MoveOn.org Director Tom Mattize was another $1,000 donor.
  
• Former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe donated $1,000 a few months after blowing his chance to be Governor of Virginia. You may also remember Mr. McAuliffe from his starring role in the Global Crossing scandal.

And our final question leads me to this: why would any out of state resident donate $4,000 to a political hack running for state office. Wjat's in for them. Well, four individuals donated the maximum to Legum's campaign account, accounting for nearly one-quarter of his total amount raised. One of them is Wolfson, but the other three donors have an interesting, albeit out of state connection.

Dr. Rose Thayaparan practices Cytopathology and Anatomic & Clinical Pathologyst St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. Her husband, P.W. Tayaparan, also donated $4,000. He used to work at the META Group, an information technology consulting firm in Stamford, Conn that was purchased by the Gartner Group. The only other $4,000 was their daughter Beatrice Wilderman. Why these three individuals would invest $12,000 in a Maryland race is frankly beyond comprehension at this point.

Judd Legum will tell everybody he knows that he has raised $65,000. But elections such as this one cannot be bought. They certainly cannot be bought by funds rasied from out of state donors with no connection to District 30. Maryland Democrats should be ashamed of thesmelves for allowing a candidate with the ego the size of Legum to become the poster child for their fundraising excesses.....and Legum himself should be ashamed that Sam Arora who was lower on the total pole than Legum managed to outrasie him in Montgomery County.

The moral of the story is that Judd Legum is selling himself to the highest bidder, whether or not that bidder is even a resident of Maryland. I hope the people of District 30 truly understand what they are getting if they vote for them this November. They won't be getting a Delegate who is serving them; they will be getting a Delegate beholden to out of state financial interests and the Clinton political machine. That's something the residents of District 30 and the people of Maryland as a whole simply cannot afford...

This guy wants to represent you, too....

Local trial lawyer/house candidate/mudslinger Judd Legum is still doing his trial lawyer bit as he campaigns for the House of Delegates. And let me tell you what, he takes on some odd cases for someone who wants to earn the public's trust:

The Odenton Volunteer Fire Company wrongly rented out its social hall for an event in which two people were shot and a third was hit by a car while fleeing the violence, a lawyer for the injured partygoers said in opening remarks Tuesday to an Anne Arundel County jury.

Judd Legum asked jurors to hold the fire company liable for his clients' injuries.

But Senior Assistant County Attorney Hamilton Tyler said that it was not the fire company's fault that the party organizer lied on her application and that a disgruntled partygoer shot two people....

....Legum said the county liquor board threatened to curb the license at the Odenton facility after other violence, including at an event in March 2005 in which Young applied under her maiden name to hold a party for a nonprofit that was really a for-profit party where a person was stabbed.

The fire company promised to rein in the parties, blackball anyone who lied on an application and have firefighters monitor the events, but that didn't happen, Legum said.

Tyler said the trial will show that Young lied on the application for the September 2005 party because she knew the fire company had changed its rental policy.

So let me get this straight; Judd Legum wants to hold the Odenton Volunteer Fire Department responsible for the misuse of their facility by somebody who committed fraud and decieved the fire company to obtain use of its facility, and he wants Anne Arundel County taxpayers to fork over $7 million in taxpayer dollars in restitution for something neither the county nor the taxpayers were liable for.

Is this really why we pay taxes? Is this really a good use of taxpayer dollars? Of course it isn't.

The fact of the matter is that the trial lawyer who wants Anne Arundel County resident to fork over $7 million for something that the lawyer himself knows that the county could not be responsible for also wants to represent the people of Anne Arundel County in the House of Delegates. Is this the kind of guy we want to be making decisions with our taxpayer dollars in the House of Delgates?

Judd Legum is very good and finding new and creative ways to beclown himself, and new and amazing ways to show that he is not fit to be a member of the House of Delegates...

Judd Legum's New Line same as his old line...

Judd Legum couldn't be bothered to discuss his the recent revelation of his new gig as a mudslinger for New York Governor David Paterson. But he has plenty of time to continue raising money for his campaign for House of Delegates in District 30.....and apparently plenty of time to again violate state campaign finance laws by not including the authority line for his campaign committee.

Obviously, Judd Legum doesn't take campaign finance laws seriously since this isn't his first breach of them. Nor does he seem to care that the penalty for violating such laws is disqualification from being a candidate for public office.

The irony of course is that Legum does not advertise his own fundraiser from his own campaign site or his Twitter account. It's almost like he has been going out of his way to hide his fundraisers from the public; it was only from a post by Paul Foer that I was even made aware of Legum's event. And it's not like his last fundraiser which was sponsored by lobbyists days after claiming his campaign would not accept contributions form...lobbyists.

Judd Legum and his hypocrisy are going to be the gift that keeps on giving in 2010....

Judd Legum's still playing in the Mud

Sure, our friend Judd Legum may be running as a Democrat for Delegate in District 30, but that doesn't mean he's taking any time off from being a political hack for hire:

Gov. Paterson has hired the man who was responsible for "negative research" on then-presidential candidate Barack Obama to dig up dirt on Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who is preparing to run for governor, The Post has learned.

Paterson's campaign committee signed Maryland-based Judd Legum, research director for then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's bitterly fought presidential primary campaign against Obama in 2008, to a five-week contract earlier this month, with the understanding that he would "prepare a research book on Cuomo" and other potential candidates for governor, said a prominent Democratic Party activist.

"Legum is the guy who did a lot of the opposition research work on Obama, and now Paterson's people are outsourcing that kind of work on Cuomo to him," said the source, who demanded anonymity.

Legum, a friend of Paterson campaign spokeswoman and strategist Tracy Sefl, is being paid about $25,000 for the project, it was learned.

Legum confirmed that he had been hired by Paterson's campaign but, when asked to describe his job, insisted, "I really can't talk about that now," and hung up the phone.

Repeated attempts to reach Legum for additional comment were unsuccessful.

Well isn't that special? I wonder what the African-American Democratic primary voters, who just saw Zina Pierre thrown under the bus by the Democratic establishment, are going to think about the white lawyer whose job was to trash Barack Obama in the General Election.

I find it even more humorous that Legum has no comment when you consider the fact that Legum told Capital reporter Eric Hartley that he wants "people would know what I'm up to" in a Twitter interview.

When you combine Legum's shady dealings with Paterson, along with his involvement in ThinkProgress' manufactured deceit, his auctioning of himself to Washington lobbyists, the old questions about his campaign appartus, and the self promoting narcissism that even Democrats can't stand, I would say that there a lot of reasons why nobody of any political stripe can find any reason why Judd Legum should be representing the people of District 30.

Regardless of the ethical clouds that surround Judd Legum, the fact that of the matter is that he owes the people of District 30 and honest answer; is he going to try and be their delegate, or is he content to be a professional political hack. The people of District 30 want to know...

Judd Legum: On $ale Now

Well, if you had any preconceived notion that Judd Legum's campaign for the Maryland House of Delegates was about serving the people of District 30, you can forget about that. Looks like the truth-impaired Clintonista needs to go out of state to raise his money. Legum's ActBlue page (curiously and seemingly illegally still lacking an authority line) notes that his campaign is having his next fundraiser in Washington, DC, and it is being headlined by former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta.

The "host committee" contains a number of national Clintonistas, including Howard Wolfson and Patti Solis Doyle, plus former MoveOn.org Director Tom Mattize.

So, what we have here is a candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates who is more interested in hobnobbing with Washington Insiders and raising the money from Washington Special Interest Groups than in the people of District 30. Obvious, Judd Legum's political compass is pretty far askew if he thinks that the people of District 30 will be well served by his raising of dirty money from Washington lobbyists (funny considering he claims to be eschewing money from Maryland lobbyists).

Let's face it: Judd Legum is a joke and an embarrassment to the Maryland Democratic Party. The number of Democrats who have privately told me that they wish he would just go away is impressive. And anybody who thinks that the people of District 30 will be well served by a candidate bought and paid for by Washington lobbyists is seriously deluding themselves....

Memo to Judd Legum

All of those people you say allegedly support the President's economic policies.....yeah, where are they again?

As short-term optimism about the economy has grown in recent months, so has the concern that the federal governmentwill do too much in response to the nation’s recent economic challenges.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 52% of the nation’s Likely Voters now worry that the government will do too much. That’s up from 50% a month ago and 43% in mid-February. It’s the highest level of concern measured since Barack Obama was elected president.

To put this simply so Legum can understand.....more than half the country is worried that the government is going to go too far is trying to manage the economy. Maybe that explains why over 500,000 people across the country attended tea parties last week.

Here is a graph so that maybe Legum cam understand what we are talking about here:

There are other stats there that continued to debunk Judd Leugm's space cadet philosophy on the economy. But you need only too look around to notice that people are vehemently opposed to this President's economic policies. And the more the President and Congress spend, the more likely it is Republicans will succeed in 2010 and 2012.

Denial

Our good friend Judd Legum is in complete denial about the anti-tax movement sweeping the country. Legum, who takes offense to the fact that somebody carried this sign around a tea party protest elsewhere, has this smart-ass comment:

Those involved with organizing the protests appear to be a distinct minority.

Mind you:

• There have been hundreds of tea parties around the nation with participation ranging in the thousands.
• Pro-Obama protests draw fewer people than a high school history class.

The fact of the matter is that Legum and the rest of the extreme left in this country do not understand the problems the Tea Party crowd has with them. Namely the fact that we alreay pay too much in taxes and that irresponsible spending that puts our nation further and further in debt is not supported by the preponderance of Americans.

If Legum wants to come out and support higher taxes, more staist government, and the continued dimunition of economic and personal liberty, he can own it all he wants. But Legum is in a considerably large state of denial if he thinks he is anything but far, far, FAR outside the modern American mainstream. Then again, that shouldn't be a surprise, given the low opinion that a lot of Democrats I have spoken with have for Legum....

I dare Legum to have a counter, anti-Tea Party protest on Wednesday. See how many people show up for that one, skippy.

Do as I say, not as I do

The "Progressive" blogosphere is all a flutter about the fact that ThinkProgress founder and former Hillary Clinton research director Judd Legum is running for the House of Delegates in Maryland, targeting conservative Republican incumbent Delegate Ron George. This of course has the folks at Kos, MyDD, HuffPo and other places tripping all of themselves proclaiming Legum as the next big thing and the "first national blogger to run for office" (never mind the fact that RedState's own Erick Erickson ran for and was elected to the Macon City Council two years ago).

Like most activists on the fringe left, Judd Legum is a big believer in campaign finance reform and public financing of campaigns. This of course would require a whole new bureaucracy and funding source just to fund campaings out of the public trough here in Maryland. It would also require campaigns to follow to a T a whole slew of new filing and campaign finance requirements in order to comply with the public funding plan the Legum and his ilk want to see.

Which brings me back to Legum and his current campaign. Legum has already raised a decent sum from his campaign via ActBlue. But you see, in Maryland you are required to a do a few things before you can start organizing a political campaign and raising money. This includes filing a statement of organization and opening a dedicated bank account for campaign activities. However Maryland's online database of campaign finance entities does not contain any information about Legum filing the appropriate paperwork that would allow him to legally raise campaign contributions.

This is not the only issue that Legum has when it comes to campaign finance issues. Maryland law also requires that each item of campaign material must contain an authority line on it indicating who produced it. That authority line must contain the name or address of the individual producing the material unless an appropriate entity is on file with the State Board of Elections. Legum's website, on which he is soliciting donations for his campaign for the House of Delegates, contains no such authority line.

Both of these violations are pretty serious. Even the seemingly minor issue of an authority line is punishable by up to a $1,000 fine, up to one year in jail, and a prohibition from seeking public office for four years.

At issue of course is the holier than thou nature of progressives like Judd Legum. Legum and folks like him want to continue to regulate our campaigns, regulate our lives even, to the highest extent possible. And when the continual burden of over-regulation continues, everybody at some point seems to find themselves in violation of a law one way or another. Legum will probably cry foul and explain that these issues are merely "oversights" on his part, however the issues that we have here are very serious indeed.

Legum's problem is the same as the of many a progressive: do as I say, not as a I do. His seeming failure to follow even the most basic of Maryland campaign finance laws goes a long way towards proving that many on the fringe left believe in holding politicians to the fullest extent of the law only until the point in which it inconveniences them.....