My story on the over-billing mess up at the State Democratic Party has generated a pretty consistent reaction from a lot of Democrats. This last e-mail I got is indicative of what I’m hearing.

Hey, Josh Stranger must not be paying attention. Berendt reported this to the Party Executive Committee last fall and to the whole Central Committee at its next meeting, either that fall or in first meeting of this year. And to compare some petty sleight of hand by a staffer with the kind of thing that Duke Cunningham pulled off is laughable. Just wondering what you guys think is important. Jeff

I understand the reaction. Here’s my response to Jeff:

Jeff,

Yes, Berendt announced it internally. Although, it's not clear to me that the internal party committees had the full picture or an exact accounting of what happened.

There's also a sense in which the party apparatus wanted the matter to remain quiet, which it did. I think that undermines your point because it demonstrates that telling the true believers doesn't necessarily translate into shedding light on issue for the broader public.

The real point of openness is to get it out to the broader public—the volunteers and donors. And despite Berendt's announcement to the executive board etc, the mainstream media obviously didn't know about it.

Certainly, Berendt is to be congratulated for righting the situation (getting the money back & changing policy on conflict of interest), but I reported on the original mess up because the broader public did not know about it. People close to the investigation were still upset about it and wanted it known because Demoncratic donors had a right to know.

No, it's hardly as egregious as the Cunningham's handiwork etc...

However: There are 2 things here that my editors and I thought were important.

1) While this may not be as gross an offense as some of the Republican examples, it was still $50,000. That is great deal of money—especially in light of the earnest donations that were coming in from small donors during the local effort to oust Bush.

2) If the Ds strategy is going to be pointing the finger at the Rs for a "Culture of Corruption," they're in for a lot more of this kind of reporting nationally. I wrote this article by way of example to show how tenuous & risky that moral high ground position can be. (I don't think it's the Ds best play, and this was a perfect example to demonstrate that.

For these reasons, I felt this was an important story.