Curt New RPV Finance Chair?

SWAC Girl is reporting that Walter Curt will be the next finance chair for RPV. I am not sure whether he will be an asset in this new post but I thought I would relay my personal knowledge of Mr. Curt's dealings within the party.

First of all Mr. Curt is extremely wealthy and is not shy about pumping a lot of money into political campaigns and conservative causes. It would not be impossible for him to assemble a small number of others like him and basically underwrite all of RPV's budget.

I got a phone call from Mr. Curt in March of 2003 soon after I announced I would be seeking the republican nomination for state senate in the 22nd district. I did not know who he was before he called. I later found out he was the major financier of Mark Obenshain's opponent in his nomination battle that year. Mr. Curt went on to offer to contribute $10,000 to my campaign. At the time this was a significant amount of money. It was very difficult to raise money although by budget was only $50,000. I eventually had to loan my campaign $20,000. If I had lost this would have been impossible to pay off so a contribution of this size was very tempting.

The problem was that Mr. Curt made it very clear that he wanted me to promise to vote a certain way on a potential measure that I might face once elected. I told him that I don't offer my votes for sale. After the call I did some checking and it was typical for Mr. Curt to make a large contribution but then demand it back later if a particular vote wasn't to his liking.

The irony of all this is one of the biggest attacks I received in my 2007 primary race was based on campaign contributions. My opponent alleged that because I got money from 2 or 3 certain sources that I was obligated to vote a certain way. One of those he attacked me on--the Senate Leadership Trust, which included Senator Chichester--eventually gave twice as much to him for the general election. He also attacked me for taking $6,000 in 2003 from the much maligned Sen. Chichester. Although this was used to defeat my Democrat opponent, Sen. Chichester never asked for any quid pro quo with the contribution. I voted against a number of Sen. Chichester's tax bills particularly the largest one in 2004.

Conclusion---I'm not sure. It does appear that the reason some attack others alleging a quid pro quo with contributions do so because that is how they see them. Just something to consider the next time someone says "well he got $xx from so and so thus it must be bad". Dig a little deeper and decide for yourself.