State Democrats Looking Bad On The Convention Scandal

Scott Hennen has the details on the controversy surrounding the North Dakota Democrat state convention I posted about earlier this weekend.
My favorite part is when State Director Jim Fuglie pretends to lose cell connectivity with Scott during his radio broadcast.
Here’s a summary for those of you coming late to the party. North Dakota Democrats have had to return tens of thousands of dollars from corporate contributors because state law does not allow those sort of contributions to be used for political conventions. State Director Fuglie isn’t admitting fault at this point, saying that the funds were returned to avoid the appearance of impropriety. He further states that the corporations used the money to purchase, at “fair market value,” admittance to a dinner and meet-and-greet with the headline speakers at the convention: Max Cleland and Wesley Clark, a sort of transaction that is allowed under state law.
Of course, as Mr. Hennen points out, these contributions were made in 2005. The speakers at the ND Democrat state convention weren’t announced until March of 2006. Sort of hard for Mr. Fuglie to explain all this away as corporations purchasing a “fair market value service” from a political party by way of admission to an exclusive event when the event itself didn’t even exist at the time of the contribution.
On a related note, this is sort of interesting:

BISMARCK, N.D. – Corporate money from Archer Daniels Midland Co. and four companies that treat kidney diseases helped finance North Dakota’s Democratic state convention last month, records show. Secretary of State Al Jaeger is questioning whether the $44,000 in donations were properly used.

What’s with all the donations from the kidney disease companies? I don’t get it. Brett Narloch and I were talking about it earlier this evening and we can’t figure out what interest these companies have in North Dakota Democrats.