{"id":993,"date":"2009-08-20T20:43:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T00:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/08\/20\/sen-staffords-influence-still-felt-in-north-country-politics\/"},"modified":"2009-08-20T20:43:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-21T00:43:00","slug":"sen-staffords-influence-still-felt-in-north-country-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/08\/20\/sen-staffords-influence-still-felt-in-north-country-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Stafford&#8217;s $$ influence still felt in North Country politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The website <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politickerny.com\/4947\/kay-stafford-made-nearly-60000-ghost-contributions-husbands-campaign-money\">PolitickerNY.com<\/a> has a fascinating post up about Sen. Ron Stafford&#8217;s campaign war chest, which continues to fund political activities in the North Country and across upstate New York.<\/p>\n<p>The wrinkle:  Sen. Stafford retired in 2002 and passed away in 2005.  The &#8220;ghost contributions&#8221; are being made under the auspices of his widow, Kay Stafford.<\/p>\n<p>The website points out that Ms. Stafford operates a lobbying firm, which seems to blur the line between campaign cash distributions and lobbying activities.<\/p>\n<p>But given New York&#8217;s weak campaign finance laws, the arrangement appears to be perfectly legal.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since July 2005, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elections.state.ny.us:8080\/plsql_browser\/getfiler2?filerid_in=A00466\">Committee to Re-Elect Senator Stafford<\/a> has contributed nearly $60,000 to charities and fellow Republicans including Betty Little, his successor in the North Country-based Senate seat. The committee still has over $50,000 in its coffers&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article says the Clinton County Republican Committee has also received funds from the war chest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The website PolitickerNY.com has a fascinating post up about Sen. Ron Stafford&#8217;s campaign war chest, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}