During his doomed re-election campaign, former Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) did his best to convince voters that he wasn’t worried in the least about what Jack Abramoff had told prosecutors. Hell, he’s not even a target of the investigation!
If he failed to convince voters, that may be because he appears not to have convinced himself: rather than spend his bottom dollar on last-minute ad buys to eke out a win, Burns quietly banked nearly $300,000. He lost by 3,602 votes.
Playing the squirrel to Rep. John Doolittle‘s (R-CA) grasshopper, Burns is now sitting pretty. That’s money he can use down the line to pay his lawyers, whom he’s already paid more than $90,000. By contrast, Doolittle, the other lawmaker reported to be in prosecutors’ sites, finished his successful re-election bid in debt. Silly grasshopper.