Shoeless Kate

There was a time I indulged in covering every move Katherine Harris made. I’ve tried to cut down — once you get hooked on Harris stories, it’s hard to kick the habit — but this one’s too good to pass up.

As part of going cold-turkey on Harris anecdotes, I avoided a piece last week about an aide rushing through the Capitol toward the House gallery with a pair of her shoes. She apparently needed a particular pair of heels. (It could not be confirmed if she was barefoot on the House floor.)

Today, Roll Call gives us more backstory to the incident:

The tale begins at the shoeshine stand near the Rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building. An eyewitness there said a young blonde guy walked up looking for a pair of shoes that apparently had been dropped off to be shined.

“What kind of shoes?” the employee asked. “Women’s shoes,” the young man replied, provoking a quizzical look from the woman working the shoeshine stand. The aide explained he was looking for a pair of shoes belonging to “Congresswoman Katherine Harris,” our informant said.

He took the shoes and rushed toward the Capitol, where, along the way, he was spotted by a reporter for the Kansas City Star who reported on the newspaper’s Web log that he saw a “strapping young man” hurrying across the Capitol complex “holding a stylish pair of mid-heel blue-and-white ladies’ shoes.”

But that’s just the half of it. Meanwhile, on the other side of town:

[A]nother Harris aide, a staff assistant, was driving the Congresswoman’s brown convertible BMW over to the Capitol to pick up the tow-headed shoe carrier. And, of course, the staff assistant got rear-ended on the way over to the House.

As if that weren’t enough, after he picked up the shoe carrier, who we are told is an intern, the aide who was driving got pulled over by a Capitol Police officer and was given a $40 ticket for “distracted driving.”

Apparently, that’s not the only bare-feet-related hijink Harris has been involved in: “Last month, if you recall, we reported that one of our spies spotted a well-dressed but shoeless Harris standing in front of her house on Sixth Street Northeast peering through the mail slot, shouting, ‘Let me in!'”