Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Another Chaka Fattah Update

According to a press release on politicspa today:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today she will convene a bipartisan National Summit on America's Children on Tuesday, May 22, and that Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) will serve as one of three co-chairs.


That's one week after the primary election. Either Rep. Fattah will be the de facto next mayor of Philadelphia or he will have lost the race. Assuming, of course, that Philadelphia politics will follow the usual pattern and whoever wins the Democratic primary will win the election in November.

A Smoke-Filled Room has been keeping me up to date on the mayoral media news. According to an article in today's Daily News ("Fattah Backs Off Claim, Remains Mum on Finances," by Bob Warner), Congressman Fattah is no longer saying he won't release his tax returns because his wife's job contract forbids it, but because she prefers that information on her salary remain private. They file joint tax returns so releasing his information releases hers also.

Shades of Geraldine Ferraro -- when she was running for vice president she released her tax returns but initially refused to release her husband's, and received a considerable amount of bad press because of it. When a politician marries, or when someone marries a politician, they have to expect things like this. The Fattahs could have decided to file separately but didn't. For what it is worth, I think they should release the returns.

UPDATE: The March 29th Inquirer has an article "Fattah: Can't disclose tax data," by Andrew Maykuth, stating the Fattah's wife cannot release her salary due to a confidentiality agreement in her employment contract.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

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AboveAvgJane said...

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