The name you’re trying to remember is ‘Tim Mahoney.’

He was the guy that the Democrats put into FL-16 to replace Mark Foley over an inappropriate email scandal… and then Tim Mahoney was the guy that tried to pay off his mistress with campaign money, got then-DCCC Chair and current WH CoS Rahm Emanuel to cover it up in 2007… and who then couldn’t quite make it to Election Day 2008 without anybody noticing.  So Madam Speaker threw Mahoney to the wolves, and the media let her. So… sex scandal, leadership finds out, internal cover-up, public revelations, quick abandonment of the now-radioactive Congressman.

Why, yes, that does sound familiar, doesn’t it?

Moe Lane

Governor X revealed?

If so, the New York Daily News is being rather artful about it:

Meanwhile, people have been speculating with vengeance since we told you about the former Davis escort who contends Spitzer wasn’t the only governor she romped with. On Friday, when Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell‘s spokesman Chuck Ardo resigned, Ardo insisted his retirement had nothing to do with Gawker and other sites putting Rendell on their short list of pols who may be Governor X. Ardo told The D.C. Write Up that Rendell is not the new luv guv – “no way, no how, no place, no time.”

Many seem to be aching for X to be Arnold Schwarzenneger. While we’re continuing to investigate the escort’s highly detailed story of her three “dates” with him, we won’t identify the chief exec with the prominent wife. But we will say this: it ain’t California‘s Governator.

So Gov. Rendell’s former PR flack’s denial that his former boss patronizes prostitutes gets reported without comment – while unnamed rumors that it was actually Gov. Schwarzenegger get firmly and unequivocally debunked.  Either way, absolutely deniable on the Daily News’ part. Continue reading Governor X revealed?

What were Rahm Emanuel’s (D) links to Tim Mahoney (D), anyway?

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

No, I don’t have any updates to the FBI investigation of former Congressman Mahoney (D, FL-16) and whether he used campaign funds to pay off one of his mistresses, sorry. That’s going to be a quiet kind of story until the FBI finishes said investigation; after all, Mahoney was brutally sacrificed to the media gods by the Democratic Party desperate to have that story not derail their 2008 Congressional campaign. People who may find themselves accused of anything similar, please note: don’t count on a payback for your loyalty – even if you happen to be innocent, which Mahoney was almost certainly not.

Which brings me to my next point.  Rahm Emanuel.  Name was linked to Mahoney’s back then – something about sanitizing the record – but nobody in the media was interested in pushing on that for very long.  But now that Rep. Emanuel is COS Emanuel, and now that we’re reminded that Emanuel’s a Freddie Mac guy who entered into lucrative contracts on the DCCC’s behalf with his landlord’s polling firm (it’s claimed that it was a complete coincidence that he wasn’t paying rent), one does have to ask: what, exactly, did Rahm Emanuel have to do with Tim Mahoney’s little payoff problem?

And can we get an answer under oath?  I only ask because there’s been an awful lot of Democrats Behaving Badly stories in the news lately.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.