A Blog Called Hope

No, we’re not talking about a Hanson comeback tour…

Today Rhode Island Democratic Party Chairman Bill Lynch filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Governor Carcieri’s office seeking details of how much right-wing Republican attorney James Bopp was paid to file a friend-of-the-court brief with the Rhode Island Supreme Court on behalf of the governor.

“The governor is using taxpayer money to advocate his personal opinion, and whether you’re for or against marriages of same sex spouses, you have to be outraged by that. This is nothing less than a gross abuse of the governor’s authority, and I believe Mr. Carcieri should be held accountable,” Lynch said.

Bopp has been a zealous defender of right-wing candidates and special interest groups charged with skirting and sometimes shattering campaign finance and election laws. In fact, as the chairman points out in today’s release, Bopp was the man picked to represent Carcieri and the Rhode Island GOP for committing the most egregious violation of campaign finance law in the state’s history.

Some of Bopp’s other notable clients have included the Christian Broadcasting Network; Traditional Values Coalition; the Christian Coalition, as well as the Republican parties of Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont.

In June, Chairman Lynch questioned the governor’s management ability after a story in the Providence Journal exposed another no-bid deal engineered by the Carcieri administration that could end up costing the taxpayers close to four million dollars. No one in Carcieri’s office could explain how Sutherland Asbill, a high-profile Washington law firm, was picked to handle the state’s case against Southern Union, who the state contends is responsible for an environmental nightmare in Tiverton.

And while the administration has still failed to fully explain why there was no public bidding process in the Southern Union case, Carcieri’s own ties to Bopp and Bopp’s backing of GOP presidential wannabe Mitt Romney (who Carcieri supports), may offer insight into how and why he got the job.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 11:39 am and is filed under GOP, Governor, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.