The McCoy Indictment

There has been quite a hullabaloo about Alberto Gonzalez and the US Justice Dept. of late. If you haven’t heard about it, check here for a good primer. Here in Iowa, we are dealing with a different scandal involving our US Attorney, but David Yepsen thinks it might be connected to the national scandal.

When (gay) Democratic State Senator Matt McCoy was indicted for allegedly using his elected position to “extort” a $2,000 consulting fee from a company he was working for, it made us look pretty bad. But Yepsen digs deeper and actually comes up with something interesting: it turns out that Matt Whitaker, the US Attorney prosecuting McCoy, is a homophobic Republican crony. Quoth Yepsen:

Whitaker is a Republican. And not just any Republican, but a socially conservative one who ran unsuccessfully for state treasurer in 2002 and could well be a candidate for office again.

He recently was in the news when he was scheduled to emcee an event for the Iowa Christian Alliance, a successor group to the Iowa Christian Coalition.

After first granting him permission to host the event, Whitaker said the Justice Department revoked it after objections from liberal groups. Instead, he just attended the meeting.

So he’s a Republican with ties to the Christian Coalition, which is basically the group that controls the Republican Party of Iowa. US Attorneys are, in a sense, political appointees, so that isn’t surprising. But Whittaker’s partisanship is unusual. Continuing:

Active involvement in ideological political action groups like that is rare for U.S. attorneys in Iowa — and even the Justice Department higher-ups seemed to think better of it. For good reason. McCoy is a Democrat. And not just any Democrat but an openly gay one.

So we now have the specter of a politically ambitious, evangelical Republican with ties to the religious right going after a gay Democrat.

Well, good. If anyone wants an example of the politically charged ‘duties’ of a US Attorney in the Bush administration, this should serve well.

1 comment March 18th, 2007

Yepsen: Iowa Driven By Extremes?

Because this fair web site hasn’t been around for more than two and a half days, we didn’t post about it when it came up, but Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen wrote last Thursday under a headline “Left/right extremes drive Iowa political landscape.”  He argued that “social conservatives” like the Christian Coalition are becoming more and more influential in Iowa:

Religious conservatives will also be a factor in the re-election plans of Des Moines Democrat Matt McCoy, an openly gay legislator. He’s already got a primary challenger, and Republicans are also planning to field a candidate. While his district is heavily Democratic, it also includes many south-side Catholics and blue-collar evangelicals.

Bottom line: Republicans are hoping the work of the alliance can counter the Democratic trends and intense passions coming from the left these days. The election of 2006 in Iowa seems no place for moderates or middle-of-the-roaders. ’Tis a battle of the zealous.

And then he forgot to talk about any groups on the “extreme left.”  All he says about us is some dismissive remark about our “intense passions” — whatever that means.

Add comment March 13th, 2006