Pittsburgh Political Scandal Update

This is a follow-up on my earlier post on a potential scandal in the Pittsburgh area where a guardian for a woman with dementia who had not made a single disclosable federal election donation since 2000 suddenly dropped $40,000 into four local Republican candidates' warchests.

First some good news. Three of the candidates who received $10,000 donations are returning the money to Mrs. Jordan's control. I applaud them for acting ethically as soon as they knew the facts of the case. They are Jan Rea, Vince Gasteb and Susan Caldwell.

I just wanted to check into her contribution behavior for state and local races before my BS detector went to Code Red. Well we're there, this has some serious legs. I went to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Division of Campaign Finance and Lobbying Disclosure, and entered a search for all individuals who donated to a state or local campaign since January 1, 2000 and with the last name of Jordan. The following screen shot is all that I found for either Shirley Jordan or her deceased husband Fred Jordan:



One entry to one of the candidates named in the Post Gazette reporting. The other three donations are not disclosed yet on the website but this is NOT a problem as there is a time lag for disclosure and all campaigns are still in a permissable disclosure window. But there is absolutely no other donations by a Fred or Shirley Jordan who lived or lives in Western Pennsylvania.

Next I pulled up the donations for Charles McCullough, the attorney who is the trustee for Mrs. Jordan for the time period of Jan. 1, 2005 to today just to see if he has donated to people in the past. The following figures are for donations made in the name of attorney Charles P. McCullough OR Charles and Patricia McCullough:



So we know that he is an active political contributor, and there is nothing wrong with that. So where does his political money go? The next two charts look at the same time period. The first one is comprehensive, while the second one excludes his wife's campaign.





He donates overwhelmingly to Republicans and has a history of not being able to pick winners. Again there is nothing wrong with this, but I think we can conclude that he either is a player in SW PA GOP politics or at least wants to be a player. There is nothing in here that is illegal, and few things that are absolute head scratchers as the maximum donations made to candidates other than his wife are fairly small.

My Excel file can be found here