The FBI investigating a lobbying firm that is close to Republican Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback for running a pay to play scheme involving access to the governor.
According to the Topeka Capital-Journal:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is exploring whether confidantes of Gov. Sam Brownback operated influence-peddling operations in Kansas pivoting on personal access to the Republican governor and top administration officials.
The Topeka Capital-Journal learned the months-long inquiry involves Parallel Strategies, a rapidly expanding Topeka consulting and lobbying firm created in 2013 by a trio of veteran Brownback employees who left government service to work in an environment where coziness with former colleagues could pay dividends.
Of concern to the FBI were behind-the-scenes financial arrangements related to Brownback’s privatization of the state’s $3 billion Medicaid program. The governor’s branding of KanCare handed to three for-profit insurance companies exclusive contracts to provide Medicaid services to 380,000 of Kansas’ disabled and poor.
Brownback would be the third Republican governor who is caught up in an investigation. Texas Gov. Rick Perry and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are also being investigated. What is being investigated is a possible pay to play scandal which could mirror much of the ugly relationship between money and politics that makes Capitol Hill go. Brownback has taken the DC environment that he lived in as a senator, and transferred it to the state of Kansas.
As the governor, Brownback passed what liberal and conservative experts agree is the worst piece of tax reform legislation in the country. Brownback led a 2012 movement that purged moderate Republicans from the state senate, and replaced them with tea partiers. All of these actions have cost him the support of moderate Republicans in the state. A recent, and notoriously unreliable, Rasmussen poll has Brownback leading his Democratic challenger by 7 points, despite the fact that his approval rating remains upsidedown.
One of the byproducts of the Supreme Court’s campaign finance decisions is that there is likely to be more corruption. Democrats aren’t immune to the corruption associated with campaign finance, but Republicans are much more susceptible because of their heavy reliance on big money donors. If Brownback gets caught up in this scandal, Kansas could go from red to blue.
Republicans are dropping like flies, but Gov. Brownback’s potential involvement in a pay to play scandal could be most severe breach of public trust of them all.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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