Hanky-Panky On Long Island Between Peter King And Steve Israel?

Peter King's son Sean works for one of the crookedest lobbying firms in America

Most candidates for Congress-- and that includes incumbents-- do not run primarily on a foreign policy platform. First of all, voters do not perceive themselves affected by foreign policy on a day to day basis, and, secondly, the president, in his roles as Chief of State and Commander in Chief, has far more power on foreign policy than any individual member of Congress. Even a distinguished senator like Dick Lugar lost to “rape is something God intended” Richard Mourdock in the 2012 primary, an example of what could happen when a consensus develops that a politician is focused too much on foreign policy instead of what is happening at home.

But in the warped reality that is Peter King Land, this principle hasn’t held true, at least until now. I’m not too sure what King ran on before 9/11, apart from the goodwill that he generated from fundraising for NORAID, the IRA’s front in America that smuggled weapons and money overseas to wage terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland. But it couldn’t have been anything remotely interesting or compelling that would make his Nassau County district a better place to live. Worse for him, the district moved significantly east-- into Democratic-leaning parts of Suffolk County-- where voters don't know what the hell he's talking about… or why.

Grumman, a defense contractor and big campaign donor for King-- their PAC gave him $8,000 in 2006, $8,000 in 2008, $7,500 in 2010, $6,000 in 2012, $5,000 so far this year-- closed its plant in King’s district one year after he took office and since then has outsourced virtually all of its jobs off Long Island, most recently last year. Where was King during this, and where is King now helping on Long Island to protect jobs and create new ones, especially in the military-industrial complex that provides so much campaign cash ($352,800 so far) for him? Employing as many as 30,000 Long Islanders at its height-- in Valley Stream, Farmingdale, Bethpage and Calverton-- the figure is down to a few hundred now.

Maybe King was getting kickbacks from these companies in return for not even putting up a fight for the best interests of his constituents. That actually may be holding true in the case of Grumman: there is a toxic plume emanating from the site of the shuttered plant that threatens groundwater supplies (where Long Island gets its drinking water), and it was declared a Superfund site.

In 2012, King wrote a letter to the EPA calling for the federal government to take over the cleanup from the state, and a month ago opposed the housing of immigrant children there. Nowhere did King call for Grumman to be held legally responsible for the mess they made, nor would he want immigrant children living on the site lest they get sick from the contamination and really get both him and Grumman in hot water.

But after 9/11, a horrific terrorist attack in which hundreds of people in King’s district lost their lives, King, for the sake of his political career, did a complete reversal and remade his entire image. Instead of fundraising for terrorists, King was now condemning them. This tactic understandably worked due to the deep personal connection the district had to 9/11.

But King was condemning terrorists (only the Muslim ones of course) so much that he started to see terrorists where they weren’t any. And I’m not even talking about his 2011 McCarthy witch hunt hearings on Muslim-Americans. Knee-jerk congressional hawks like King were part of the reason-- after Afghanistan turned into a nation-building exercise when bin Laden got away in the mountains of Tora Bora-- why we shifted gears to Iraq. Saddam was the perfect boogeyman in the stead of bin Laden, and who already had a checkered history with the US. And we all know what happened after Saddam fell: the terrorists appeared where they weren’t before.

King continues to rake in the campaign dough from defense contractors who profit from pre-emptive wars abroad, and this explains why he is once again advocating for boots on the ground in Iraq. But one donor raises ethical concerns, and continues to do so to this day: Park Strategies.

Park Strategies is a lobbying firm that was founded by former Senator Al D’Amato, King’s mentor. The firm also employs King’s son, Sean. They represent a host of defense contractors that are also King donors, and received lucrative contracts while King was Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. They also represent several foreign governments. In 2006, King made a speech on the House floor in favor of a proposed free trade agreement with Taiwan, an agreement that was supported by Park Strategies whose lobbyists are registered foreign agents of the Taiwanese government.

That same year, both the now-defunct blog Peter King Watch and King’s Democratic opponent, then-Nassau County Legislator Dave Mejias, rightfully called King out on this. In a Newsday article just days before the election, King responded, “He [Sean] has no dealing with my office. He has no clients that deal with my office. He deals primarily in overseas investment, and has nothing to do with my office.”

Probably the most unbelievable explanation that has ever been uttered by the man.

Many people wonder why Steve Israel, King's nominally Democratic congressional neighbor to the north, consistently protects King from his perch as DCCC chair. Even though King is in one of the most Democratic-leaning districts with a Republican incumbent, Israel has a strict hands-off policy towards him. Many have speculated that the connections the two share with organized crime and with war contractors and arms manufactures-- Israel sucked up $587,465 from the same sources that were paying off King the $352,800. Israel undercut Democratic candidate Vivianne Falcone in the 2012 and he's undercutting Democratic candidate Pat Maher today. Israel-- the man charged with winning back the House for the Democrats. He'd rather waste millions of DCCC dollars chasing phantom deep red districts in Arkansas than a district President Obama not just won in 2012 but in which he actually increased his winning margin!