After reading the sworn statement by Marty
Kovarik for the Jim Oberweis campaign last week, I came to the
conclusion that his story has more holes in it than Dick
Cheney’s hunting buddy. Kovarik was deputy treasurer to Judy Baar
Topinka in 1995. Before that, he was her Senate-office chief of
staff for several years. Kovarik approached the Oberweis campaign a
couple of weeks ago with a long story about alleged corruption in
Topinka’s office. The Oberweis campaign took a sworn
statement from him. Oberweis is now trumpeting Kovarik’s
statement as “vindication” of one of his TV attack ads.
Tying your credibility to someone else is always risky, but doing
so without first vetting that person’s story is reckless to
the point of insanity. Let’s hit the high points: Kovarik’s claim
about who ordered the shredding of a hotel-loan-related document is
in serious question. Kovarik claims that Topinka ordered the
shredding when her spokesman Jim Howard called Topinka’s
home. Howard claimed years ago that he told Kovarik about how the
document had been discovered while he was in Kovarik’s office
and claimed that Kovarik immediately ordered it shredded. Kovarik told Bernie Schoenburg of the State Journal-Register that
he ordered the document shredded — but he said in his sworn
statement that he would never shred a state document. In any case,
the document was never shredded. Topinka released it to the media.
Kovarik claims in his
statement that he wasn’t in on that controversial 1995
hotel-loan deal with Republican fundraiser Bill Cellini’s
business partners. “I was not in on any part of the deal
except that I knew what had happened at the end,” Kovarik
swore. At the time, though, Kovarik was described in press reports
as an integral party in the negotiations, and he told the
Associated Press of meetings he had held with hotel negotiators.
Kovarik did not return two phone messages and an e-mail message
last week. Oberweis has been
trying to tie Topinka to Cellini for weeks. Kovarik’s
statement seemed to put everything together, but his story has been
completely challenged. Kovarik claims that Cellini introduced
Topinka at Republican Day events at the Illinois State Fair.
Cellini “religiously introduced Judy Baar Topinka,”
Kovarik claimed. “I mean, it was always, you know, my good
friend, senator from the 22nd District and the next treasurer of
the State of Illinois.” Kovarik claimed that Topinka would
then come up to the dais: “And of course they would exchange a hug, and — and in her
usual manner she would give him a kiss on the cheek or wherever he
wanted to be kissed.” Trouble is, Cellini apparently never did any
such thing. Anyone who knows Cellini knows that he’s a
back-of-the-room type of guy, if he shows up at all. Cellini flatly
denied ever introducing Topinka at such an event, and Irv Smith,
the former Sangamon County Republican Party Chairman, said he
couldn’t ever recall anything like that happening. Other
local Republicans backed them up. Kovarik also identifies Cellini in his
statement as the chairman of the Sangamon County GOP and says that
he “owns and operates an asphalt paving company.” Both
statements are false. Kovarik specifically
names three people in Topinka’s former legislative office
who, he claimed, were ordered to do campaign work — but one
of those people was a political staffer paid with campaign funds.
Oops. The others deny that they were ordered to do campaign work on
state time or that they did anything else improper and have
threatened to sue Kovarik unless the statement is retracted. If Oberweis had questioned the ethics of
Topinka’s hiring an alleged boyfriend as deputy treasurer, he
might have been branded a cad but would have made a good point. If
true, the move shows a lack of professionalism, to say the least.
Instead, Oberweis dragged out a smear that is almost laughable on
its face. But my favorite part of this whole thing is
the little nugget in Oberweis’ press release last week titled
“Jim Oberweis vindicated for ‘Take a Closer Look at
Judy Baar Topinka’s ads.’ ” Oberweis is quoted in the release as saying:
“Only Ms. Topinka’s current confidant Nancy Kimme can
be said to have a relationship nearly as close as that between Mr.
Kovarik and Ms. Topinka.” Class. Real class.
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2006.
