New RPV Chief Co-Founded Group That Smeared Cantor?

My god, the RPV's "leadership" (using the word extremely loosely) truly is the gift that keeps on giving. To Democrats, that is. I mean, the whole Jeff Frederick soap opera has been great, but now that Jeff is gone (but not forgotten), what next? Well, check this out about new RPV chief, Pat Mullins.

Mullins was one of a handful of Republicans in early 2000 who formed the Faith and Family Alliance, a 527 political group that mailed out an anti-Cantor attack ad four days before Cantor faced Sen. Stephen H. Martin in a GOP primary to replace retiring congressman Thomas J. Bliley.

The ad attacked Cantor and his family over a business partnership’s late payment of Henrico taxes alongside the allegation: “Millionaire lawyer Eric Cantor says he wants to cut your taxes … but he didn’t pay his own. He got caught. He got fined. And he finally was forced to pay $31,527.17 in back taxes,” according to a June 18, 2000, article in The Daily Progress.

Mullins, of course, denies that he knew anything about this, but how do you end up on the board of an organization and not know? Is Mullins that bad a leader? If so, why have Virginia Republicans selected him as their new chairman?

But wait, there's more!

The anti-Cantor mailing was apparently sent out by the Faith and Family Alliance’s president, Robin Vanderwall of Virginia Beach. At the time, Vanderwall told The Daily Progress that he had received a $15,000 donation from a secret donor or donors to mail the attack ad to 40,000 voters in the GOP’s 7th Congressional District primary.

Vanderwall, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence for soliciting sex from a minor on the Internet, told the Washington Post in 2005 that the Faith and Family Alliance was used almost exclusively to secretly finance political goals, including one organized by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The organization, Vanderwall told the Post, was used as a secret pass-through to fund Abramoff’s campaign against a ban on Internet gambling and to attack Cantor.

Vanderwall, who ran McDonnell’s 1999 campaign for the House of Delegates...

That's right, we've got ties to a convicted sex offender, Jack Abramoff and Bob McDonnell here as well. As I said earlier, "the gift that keeps on giving."

But wait, there's even MORE!

Vanderwall said when he took over Faith and Family that the incorporation papers were a mess. So he turned to McDonnell, whose campaign for delegate he had managed the year before. McDonnell said he referred Vanderwall to a colleague at his Virginia Beach law firm, Huff, Poole & Mahoney. Faith and Family's filing of notice as a 527 organization with the Internal Revenue Service lists Huff, Poole & Mahoney as the group's custodian of records.

On the board of Faith and Family with Vanderwall was Keith Polarek, the husband of Janet Polarek, McDonnell's campaign manager in his race for attorney general, according to state corporation records. Keith Polarek released a statement through McDonnell's campaign saying: "If there was anything being done that shouldn't have been, I didn't know it."

In June 2000, a series of four mailers began appearing in at least 40,000 voters' mailboxes attacking Cantor in his race against Martin. Phone calls also were made describing Martin as "the only Christian" in the race and mentioning that Cantor goes to a synagogue, but Cantor's campaign never determined who ran those attacks, an aide said.

Yes siree, we've got anti-Semitism in here as well (in fairness, the calls were anonymous and never proven to have come from Faith and Family, but it was strongly suspected), plus even more of a connection to Bob McDonnell. As I said, the RPV's "leadership" is truly the "gift that keeps on giving."

UPDATE: Republican blog Tertium Quids has more on this.