“It’s not cheap to defend the constitution,” Mike McEntee said without a trace of irony.
Remember McEntee? It’s been years since he violated city law by running a blatantly partisan campaign as “the only real conservative” Republican in the race. He also got in trouble for violating federal law, which limits federal employees from engaging in PARTISAN campaigns. Note he broke two laws at once, while trying to capitalize on the Radical Right’s advances.
McEntee seems to be a right-winger who flaunts local and federal law and continues to battle in court long after it is over while covering his self-serving with lofty invocations of The Constitution (give that man a flag to wrap himself in). I’m surprised Bush hasn’t nominated him as a judge and DeLay hasn’t hired him as an aide. mjh
Employees as candidates
The rules on seeking political office are more complex. Employees can run for office only if the election is nonpartisan. But there are exceptions. If an employee lives in Washington, or one of its surrounding suburbs, or in one of 12 other communities in Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Tennessee and Washington state where a large number of residents are federal employees, he can run for office in partisan campaigns, but only as an independent.
Even when an election is nonpartisan, the Hatch Act can trip up federal employees.
For instance, Mike McEntee, an air traffic controller for the Federal Aviation Administration ran for mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., in 2001. Candidates for local office in that city are listed on the ballot without party affiliation, so McEntee’s campaign was within the bounds of the Hatch Act. In fact, he had already served on the city council after being elected in a nonpartisan election.
But the race for mayor was competitive, and McEntee’s opponents began emphasizing their republican — not Republican Party — ideology. In response, McEntee identified himself as a republican in his campaign literature after local newspapers began referring to him as a conservative republican.
OSC charged McEntee with violating the Hatch Act. He ultimately served a four-month suspension and since has spent more than $100,000 on attorneys to appeal his suspension. His appeal is pending before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.
McEntee said that when he referred to himself as a conservative republican, he did not mean he was running as a member of the Republican Party. “In a partisan race, the parties choose the candidate to represent them. The party was not involved in selecting me to run,”? McEntee said. “I used the term republican as a way of describing my ideology.”