Montini

are shady and can’t be trusted.”

This was echoed by Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, who said, “You can almost smell the desperation from Kyrsten Sinema as she tries furiously to rewrite history. Kyrsten was just exposed for taking dirty money made by selling children for sex and now she’s lying about it. Sinema’s constituents deserve to see the evidence supporting her false assertions, or the stench surrounding her will continue to fester.” Desperation. Stench. Lying. Tough words. But note where the criticism is coming from. The Republican Party. Not other members of Congress. Why? Because they’ve all been there. Democrats. Republicans. You name it.

The real scandal illustrated by a Sinema’s situation is the crude, unrelenting necessity for politicians to raise campaign money. Every day.

During the presidential campaign, for instance, it came to light that Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul all received contributions from a white supremacist named Earl P. Holt III, whose group apparently influenced Dylann Roof, who was convicted of killing nine African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolina.

Does that make Cruz and Santorum and Paul white supremacists?

Or does it simply make them candidates who were desperate for cash, like every other politician?

Members of the Senate committee who voted to approve the nomination of Betsy DeVos for secretary of Education were reported to have taken more than $250,000 in campaign donations from DeVos and her family.

So, too, did many other members of Congress. Does that mean they all were bought off?

Some years back, DeVos wrote an essay about her big-time campaign donations, saying, in part, “I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return.” That’s politics. It’s ugly. So, is Rep. Sinema now tainted? Absolutely. Is there a politician in Washington, D.C., who is not tainted? No. All big-time (and most small-time) politicians have had trouble at one time or another with contributions contaminated by controversy. Everyone from President Donald Trump to Democrat Bernie Sanders have had questions asked about donations they accepted. Not many politicians want people looking through their list of donors with a fine-toothed comb.

I learned the sorry truth about all this in late 1989.

I was in the room full of reporters in Phoenix that year when savings-andloan mogul Charlie Keating, then accused of racketeering, fraud and conspiracy, as well as influence-peddling, was asked by a reporter if his political donations to five U.S. senators, including our own Sen. John McCain and then-Sen. Dennis DeConcini, had spurred the politicians to intervene on his behalf.

Keating answered, “I want to say, in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so.”