Kerry Expenses Red Sox and Parking Tickets to Campaign
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James Joyner | Wednesday, May 4, 2005 |
Kerry’s expenses: That’s the tickets (Boston Herald)
Sen. John F. Kerry tapped campaign funds for Red Sox tickets and to pay nearly $300 in overdue Boston parking tickets in March, records show. Kerry’s Senate campaign committee wrote a $287 check to the City of Boston Parking Clerk on March 31, 2005. The Bay State senator listed “travel expense” as the purpose for the expenditure.
Kerry leased a car for campaign-related travel in Massachusetts that was cited for about a half-dozen parking tickets in Boston. Most of the tickets were issued in October and November 2003 and not paid until more than 15 months later in March 2005 after accruing penalty fees. “They were leftover tickets we only found out about when we closed out the lease,” Kerry spokeswoman Jenny Backus said. “The car was used for the Senate campaign by staffers and volunteers.”
Kerry, meanwhile, used presidential campaign funds for a $3,150 tab for Boston Red Sox tickets in July when he threw out the first pitch at Fenway Park before the Democratic National Convention.
A Federal Election Commission spokesman said congressmen are entitled to pay for parking tickets and other expenses from their campaign funds as long as they were “campaign-related.”
Roger Simon jokes that Kerry would make an excellent UN Ambassador and Pejman Yousefzadeh is a bit dubious, as was I when I saw the blurb.
Still, these look like legit campaign expenses to me. A candidate going to throw out the first pitch at a BoSox game is certainly a campaign event, although not one that went particularly well if you’ll recall. And while the parking ticket thing is embarrassing, a campaign has cars at its disposal that staffers are running errands in.
As Pejman alludes to, things get a bit fuzzy when a candidate is also an officeholder. But that’s just the nature of the beast. Candidate-politicians are constantly soliciting contributions for their reelection or bids for higher office.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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The irony of Kerry's Fenway campaign expense is that, as we Massachusetts Red Sox fans know better than the rest of the country, Kerry has always been a jackass, and his appearance at Fenway Park is more liable to lose him votes than help him.
Familiarity breeds comtempt, and all that.
Sorry but can anyone deny that the only time John Kerry would ever step foot in Fenway Park would be for campaigning? Or that anytime a car registered to him would get a ticket in Boston not Martha's Vineyard would be for campaigning?
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