This promises to be a shorter than normal post (Slicers caught celebrating will be punished) as we're focusing our coverage primarily on the "Wiregrass Area", preferring to allow the people of Montgomery to ridicule their own politicians without our interference. Hopefully they'll allow us one indulgence as we'd hate to pass this item up.
State Sen. Quinton T. Ross Jr.,representing Montgomery County's Senate District 26
In this article you can read that as a condition of Sen. Quinton Ross being released from jail on bond, he agreed to allow his conversations to be recorded.
Today, he asked a judge to suspend this requirement. Quoting Sen. Quinton Ross, he "doesn't want to have to record his conversations with other elected officials and give them to the federal government." Further, Ross says the recording requirement means he won't be able to "transact legislative business" while recording virtually every conversation.
We here at the Razor do not have an official position on whether Sen. Ross' future conversations should be recorded. Whatever the judge decides is Ok with us. Fortunately for the electorate (and Bloggers) we have previous recordings of Sen. Ross that help us determine exactly what constitutes "transacting legislative business".
For example, in early 2009 Sen. Ross introduced a pro-gambling bill to the floor of the Alabama Senate. In exchange for introducing the bill, he received campaign contributions totaling more than $25,000.
Despite the fact that Sen. Ross did not have to face an election in 2009 and is running unopposed this year, he found that his campaign coffers were running uncomfortably low. As a result, he telephoned pro-gambling "Lobbyist A"** and stated, "that he believed that he deserved (a) campaign contribution because he had sponsored the pro-gambling legislation in the 2009 legislative session, and that he was no longer “feeling the love.”
Another successful transaction! From the federal indictment we learn that "On or about December 27, 2009, MASSEY caused to be issued to ROSS a $5,000 campaign contribution."
For Sen Ross' sake, we hope he is using the proceeds from these "transactions" to hire a good defense attorney or it seems likely that he might be "feeling the love" from his new friends in Cell Block C.
* From time to time, we find it easier to write these blogposts using the majestic plural. You can read more about our (mis)adventures with the "Royal We" here.
**At this point Lobbyist A was cooperating with the Federal Investigation, and is presumably the source of the tapes...
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