Saturday, July 29, 2006
Editorial: Beltway's corruption pinches Martinsville
Rep. Goode forgot whom he should represent when he brokered a deal favorable to campaign contributors at the risk of his district.
From the RoundTable blog
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Martinsville's economic rhythm isn't unlike the distant roar of the race cars circling its speedway. Companies announce closures. The city bleeds more jobs. The unemployment rate rises a tick. People hurt.
But every so often a horrific crash breaks the monotony. People scratch their heads and wonder why they didn't see it coming. MZM is one such wreck. While the blow that comes with losing 30 (and the promised 100 more) high-paying jobs hurts, in Martinsville terms, it shouldn't amount to more than a minor fender-bender. But this closure could stick city taxpayers with as much as a quarter-million dollar cleanup bill.
They can thank their congressman, Rep. Virgil Goode, and his alliance with a corrupt defense contractor for piling on the hurt.
Martinsville's leaders, desperate for good-paying jobs and at the insistence of Goode, agreed to an unusual deal to land MZM. It probably seemed like a safe bet at the time. Goode, their trusted representative, sponsored federal legislation to create a military center in his district and landed millions of dollars in contracts for MZM. All Martinsville had to do was agree to pay back a $500,000 state grant if MZM fell short on its hiring projections.
Unbeknownst to Martinsville -- and, Goode says, to him -- MZM's president, Mitchell Wade, was making illegal campaign contributions to several members of Congress, including Goode. Wade was convicted of bribing California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who accepted $2.4 million in cash and gifts in exchange for securing lucrative defense work for MZM.
Nothing that brazen occurred with Goode. He simply accepted $90,000 in campaign contributions from MZM employees, which were actually made by Wade. Goode might not have known of the scheme, but he should have figured something wasn't quite right when checks poured in from people who had no connection to his district but worked for a company that wanted his help.
The campaign funding stream in Washington is so polluted that even guys with squeaky clean images like Goode are bound to be soiled. They look out for their benefactors rather than their constituents.
If it stayed inside the Beltway, Goode's constituents would pass him off as a good ol' boy. Instead he stained his district.
Too bad he already turned the tainted campaign cash over to charity. Martinsville could have used it as a down payment on its debt.
