Did You Know...

The Working Families Party, an ACORN front group whose ballot line Newt Gingrich-endorsed radical leftist Dede Scozzafava has embraced on multiple occasions, is up to no good again.

The NYPost reports:

The labor-backed Working Families Party has engaged in “an audacious scheme to violate the law” to help the party’s favored political candidates get elected, a sweeping new lawsuit charges.

The first-of-its-kind suit says the WFP created a political outfit, Data and Field Services, that it is using to “circumvent state election and local campaign finance laws.”

The way the scheme works, according the suit, is that the WFP gets involved in local races, backing its favored candidates, who in turn hire DFS for vital campaign services, such as phone banking, polling and get-out-the-vote efforts.

But under the plan, the WFP-endorsed candidates pay only “a nominal sum, well below fair market value,” for those services — giving those candidates a major, unfair advantage over their opponents, whose spending is limited by law.

“This is a case about an audacious scheme to violate the law by using corporate subterfuge to hijack our local election process,” says the suit, which was filed in Staten Island.

“It goes to the very heart of our local democracy and undermines the fairness and integrity of our local elections.”

The suit, filed on behalf of five aggrieved Staten Island voters, highlights the relationship between the City Council campaign of Debi Rose, a WFP-backed candidate, and DFS.

The court papers provide a case study for how the WFP, which has been increasing its influence, operates.

With friends like these…

***

The NYPost editorial board endorses conservative Doug Hoffman for Congress:

No, Republicans needn’t toe the conservative line without any deviation. Moderate GOPers like Rudy Giuliani have managed to stray on some issues without wholly betraying their party.

But a Republican should adhere to certain minimum GOP principles. Scozzafava is just too far to the left too often.

And not only on social matters, like same-sex marriage and abortion. In Albany, Scozzafava has been such a profligate tax-and-spender, she can almost make Speaker Sheldon Silver blush.

With the backing of the ACORN-allied Working Families Party, she supports Big Labor’s favorite organizing bill — card-check — as well as the federal stimulus, opposed by every House Republican.

Hoffman, by contrast, understands the dangers of unchecked spending, monster deficits and ever-higher taxes — i.e., concerns of average working Americans.

***

Andrew Marcus shines light on WFP legislators at work in New York siphoning away federal stimulus money for a green slush fund.

And Carl Horowitz at NLPC further probes the Scozzafava family ties to ACORN/WFP.

Darleen Click: Whodathunk?