Lexington Herald Leader Explains "[Kentucky's] ... Corruption Business Model".
The corruption business model
The best spin you can put on political corruption is that it's something people fall into, starting out relatively innocently and eventually getting in so deep they don't know how to get out.
But the revelations in the recent trial and conviction of eight Clay County defendants strip even that fantasy away.
This was a serious business operation, well planned and run to give a substantial return on investment.
It involved: market research (which residents are most likely to sell their votes); organized capital investment (candidates banded together; contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy votes for an entire slate); worker recruitment (the scheme needed people to pick up the voters and get them to the polls as well as poll workers); and quality control (poll workers verified that those who had been recruited voted as instructed and gave them vouchers so they could collect pay.)
This elaborate business enterprise made money by securing access to valuable resources, such as jobs in the county government and school systems, access to county funds and the rights to let contracts for paving and other services.
The jury that convicted the eight — including a former circuit judge and a former school superintendent — also ruled that they were liable for $3.2 million in salaries and contracts obtained through their illegal schemes. Big money in one of the poorest counties in the nation.
Congratulations to the FBI and other law-enforcement officers who investigated this scheme and to the prosecutors who prevailed to obtain convictions after a grueling seven-week trial.
But one has to wonder what combination of fear, indifference and self-serving ignorance — locally and beyond — allowed pervasive corruption to thrive in Clay County for so long.
It's notable that this isn't the first, and isn't likely to be the last, round of corruption convictions related to dirty deeds in Clay County. Several other county luminaries — including a longtime mayor of Manchester, an assistant police chief, city council members, a county clerk and magistrates — have been convicted previously.
In the trial that ended with the convictions March 25, many others were named as involved in the conspiracy who have not yet been charged and it's widely anticipated that there will be additional indictments in the future.
The facts of political life in Clay County seemed to be pretty widely understood. Herald-Leader reporter Bill Estep illustrated this through the testimony of Eugene "Mutton" Lewis, a convicted drug dealer who testified he'd been a vote buyer for decades.
When a defense attorney asked if there were ways to help a candidate other than buying votes Lewis was at a loss. "Not that I know of," he responded.
With the list of the convicted now past a dozen and the extensive evidence of an organized, ongoing vote-buying machine, there's reason to believe this was not a conspiracy hidden under a bushel basket.
The best spin you can put on political corruption is that it's something people fall into, starting out relatively innocently and eventually getting in so deep they don't know how to get out.
But the revelations in the recent trial and conviction of eight Clay County defendants strip even that fantasy away.
This was a serious business operation, well planned and run to give a substantial return on investment.
It involved: market research (which residents are most likely to sell their votes); organized capital investment (candidates banded together; contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy votes for an entire slate); worker recruitment (the scheme needed people to pick up the voters and get them to the polls as well as poll workers); and quality control (poll workers verified that those who had been recruited voted as instructed and gave them vouchers so they could collect pay.)
This elaborate business enterprise made money by securing access to valuable resources, such as jobs in the county government and school systems, access to county funds and the rights to let contracts for paving and other services.
The jury that convicted the eight — including a former circuit judge and a former school superintendent — also ruled that they were liable for $3.2 million in salaries and contracts obtained through their illegal schemes. Big money in one of the poorest counties in the nation.
Congratulations to the FBI and other law-enforcement officers who investigated this scheme and to the prosecutors who prevailed to obtain convictions after a grueling seven-week trial.
But one has to wonder what combination of fear, indifference and self-serving ignorance — locally and beyond — allowed pervasive corruption to thrive in Clay County for so long.
It's notable that this isn't the first, and isn't likely to be the last, round of corruption convictions related to dirty deeds in Clay County. Several other county luminaries — including a longtime mayor of Manchester, an assistant police chief, city council members, a county clerk and magistrates — have been convicted previously.
In the trial that ended with the convictions March 25, many others were named as involved in the conspiracy who have not yet been charged and it's widely anticipated that there will be additional indictments in the future.
The facts of political life in Clay County seemed to be pretty widely understood. Herald-Leader reporter Bill Estep illustrated this through the testimony of Eugene "Mutton" Lewis, a convicted drug dealer who testified he'd been a vote buyer for decades.
When a defense attorney asked if there were ways to help a candidate other than buying votes Lewis was at a loss. "Not that I know of," he responded.
With the list of the convicted now past a dozen and the extensive evidence of an organized, ongoing vote-buying machine, there's reason to believe this was not a conspiracy hidden under a bushel basket.
Labels: News reporting
posted by KYJurisDoctor at 11:34 AM
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