Mitt Cozying Up to Foreclosure Mill that Got McCain in Trouble
Back in 2008, John McCain’s campaign shacked up with one of MI’s two notorious foreclosure mills, Trott & Trott. That housing situation became rather uncomfortable after the Macomb County GOP Chair asserted, in an on-the-record interview, that Republicans planned to use foreclosure lists to conduct vote-caging.
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.
“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.
A couple of weeks after the Democrats sued to prevent the practice, McCain packed up in a hurry and abandoned the state–a state he had won in the 2000 primary.
Apparently, Mitt has the same poor taste in friends as McCain does. Trott & Trott is dumping significant money into Mitt’s SuperPAC and campaign.
A Farmington Hills law firm that represents mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in foreclosure and eviction cases has contributed $200,000 to a super PAC supporting Republican Mitt Romney for president.
That super PAC, Restore Our Future, has run ads against Romney’s GOP rival Newt Gingrich, attacking his ties to Freddie Mac and accusing him of “cashing in” on the foreclosure crisis.
The Dec. 27 contribution, disclosed Tuesday in a Federal Election Commission filing, was written from the corporate account of Trott & Trott PC. A 2010 Supreme Court decision allows corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on independent campaigns to support or oppose federal candidates.
Managing partner David Trott is a member of Romney’s Michigan finance committee. He and his wife also contributed $7,500 to the Romney campaign, and his employees contributed more than $11,000 to Romney.
You’d think Republicans would have learned their lesson in 2008. In one of the states hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, the support of foreclosure mills like Trott & Trott only serves to make it clear where Republican loyalties lie–and it’s not with the homeowners hurt by the financial crisis.