Monday, September 3, 2012

Senator Stan, the poverty man?

Senator Stan the minority man (Gerzofsky, that is) is nothing if not an enigma.  We were reminded of this recently by two things.  First, the receipt of his official “I love me” mailer from the State House, in which he reviews his central role in all things good in Maine, just in time for the upcoming election.  (We wish we could take credit for the “I love me” label, but we can’t; a good friend coined it.)

We’ve addressed the puzzle that is Stan in some detail in the past, pointing out that according to his own public statements, he’s worked and lived in two states at once, with a variety of unrelated and overlapping career pursuits.  We documented his strange and conflicted resume in this post two years ago.

The second point that brings Stan to the forefront is a recent report that he is headed to Charlotte, North Carolina to play his role in the Democrat National Convention this week.  As a grand high poobah of Maine’s Democrat machine, we would expect no less.

Except for the fact that Stan seems to be living in abject poverty, and, you would think, be unable to afford the luxury of traveling to Democrat party central where his presence will make no difference at all.

Which brings us back to the enigma thing.  Stan owns a sizable cabin cruiser, a ‘garage full of Harleys’ (in his own words,) drives around town in a big old Cadillac, and dresses nattily in pin stripes and Tony Lama boots worthy of a “you’re gonna like the way you look; I guarantee it” label.

Fine; given his concurrent career paths in separate locations, we should expect no less.

But then you look at his filing with the Maine State Ethics Commission, in which he is required to report his sources of income for the year 2011.  You can see what he submitted here.

Surprisingly, Senator Stan had not a single source of income for 2011.  No pensions, no investment income, no rents, no social security, no disability checks, no alimony, no obscure government transfer payments, and most interesting of all, not a nickel of income from his role as a member of the State Legislature.

The latter, as we see it, was required to be listed in Part 1 of the ethics filing.  He did not do so, and curiously, neglected to check the ‘none’ box here and in other Parts of the form.  Probably just a ‘gaffe’ as they call it in political circles.

Given what happened in Tampa last week, we wish we could get Clint Eastwood to do an encore turn, in which he flags Senator Stan as ‘the intellect of the Maine Democrat Party.’

Failing that, we’ll watch for the contrails from Stan’s magic carpet as he wings his way to and from the circus in Charlotte.  And we’ll wonder how much he was given to pay for his travel expenses, and whether he’ll report it as income in his 2012 ethics filing.

We’ll leave questions about the cabin cruiser, the Harleys, and the Cadillac for another time.  You can ponder them as well if you wish.

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