Political Donation Quotes
Kennedy and Nixon served in the House together, and occasionally members would contribute to the campaigns of friends of the opposite party. There was, in those days, more comity between the parties.
He was chastising his own party’s House leadership for not allowing a promised vote on the emergency relief for Hurricane Sandy. Other emergency disaster appropriations had been made in previous years in days or weeks, but the aid for New Jersey, New York and Connecticut had been voted by the Democratic-controlled Senate but not in the Republican controlled House. The Republican House leadership had planned a vote after the Fiscal Cliff vote the previous evening before the end of the Congressional term. Then the speaker cancelled the vote infuriating Christie and many of the members of Congress. His reason was that there was opposition from the Tea Party Conservative wing of his own party who had just been badly beaten on the fiscal cliff legislation, and the Speaker was up for reelection by his own party caucus the following day. If the vote had proceeded, it would have passed with Democratic and some Republican support but with the opposition of the conservative wing some of whom noted that the states seeking the emergency aid had just recently voted for President Obama and they were opposed to more federal spending despite the fact that emergency aid had never before been subjected to such partisan criteria. After much pressure, the Speaker then committed to an up or down vote in the following Congress to the chagrin of some of the Tea Party members. But much self-inflicted damage had been done to the Republican Party. See {630994}.
The $250,000 sum would come to over $1 million in 2001 dollars. Nixon was not the first President who would only appoint an Ambassador if they made a large campaign donation, but he was the most explicit and overt.
