“I find it ironic that after all of Senator Tester's inconsistencies, he wants to tout an ‘ethics audit' that is to be conducted by a Montana Democratic Party insider,” said GOP spokesman Chris Carter.
Carter was referring to Tester's announcement that retired state Supreme Court Justice John “Skeff” Sheehy had agreed to conduct an ethics audit of the senator's office. Sheehy was a nonpartisan justice from 1978 to 1992, but previously served as a Democratic legislator from Billings for four sessions.
“It's easy to say you're for ethics and transparency in government, but living up to those promises have proved to be quite a different challenge for Senator Tester,” Carter said.
In response, Tester spokesman Aaron Murphy said: “Judge Sheehy has a distinguished career of integrity, honesty and public service. Why some folks are so eager to attack traits like those is beyond me.”
Carter listed these examples of what he said amounted to Tester telling Montanans what they want to hear as a candidate but doing something different after his election:
After saying in the campaign he didn't “support earmarks, period,” Tester “boasted” in the Los Angeles Times that he had submitted $1 billion worth of appropriations earmarks.
Murphy replied that Tester never said he was against earmarks, but opposed the lack of transparency and accountability under the previous Senate process.
After Tester said in his campaign “I won't take personal favors from lobbyists and neither will my staff,” a Washington lobbyist and Democratic donor named Patrick Murphy financed “a special bash in Tester's honor” at his home, Carter said.
Aaron Murphy said Patrick Murphy, no relation, spent his early years in Montana. The party wasn't a favor, Murphy said, but a celebration held by one Montanan for another.
Tester broke his “ethics pledge” to stop the revolving door in Washington when he hired a lobbyist from the National Association of Realtors” to join his staff, Carter said.
Murphy said Tester's policy is aimed at stopping the revolving door by not hiring back a former staff employee who has left to work for a lobbyist and wants to return to his Senate job.
Tester said in the campaign that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had guaranteed him a seat on the influential Senate Appropriations Committee, Carter said, but that hasn't happened.
In response, Murphy said Reid pledged that he would assign Tester to the committee “as soon as possible” and the senator looks forward to gaining that assignment eventually.
Tester in 2007 was forced to return $4,750 in campaign donations he accepted from “infamous” Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu.
Murphy said Tester had not accepted money from Hsu, but received money solicited by Hsu's associates. Tester, he said, “returned it out of an abundance of caution.”
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