Abigail Perlman

With a record in Washington as long and troublesome as Roy Blunt's, it's a challenge for anyone to keep track of all the stories and scandals. Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, the K Street Project, special favors for Philip Morris....Blunt and his consultants hope you forget them all.

Remembering that bit of wisdom from George Santayana, we've begun to pull together key reports, articles and columns written about Blunt, Inc. into one place.  Check it out. 

Roy Blunt's recent "Jobs for Missouri's Future" Bus Tour is a bore compared to his far more lavish Washington tours. In the "K Street Jobs Tour," Roy and his lobbying buddies make regular stops at their favorite venues along the Potomac, including top restaurants, spas, sporting events, and resorts.

Intrepid Fired Up! tipsters have obtained exclusive access to the tour itinerary and have concocted a virtual tour for your viewing pleasure disgust. Before you get started on this virtual tour, let's stop for a historic review to enhance your understanding of congressional/corporate homology. Discover how Roy Blunt became a leading K Street acolyte and a star pupil of Tom DeLay's, learning the art of deal-making, back-slapping, and go-along-to-get-along politics that have served him so well for the last 14 years.

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Hey look, kids.  Roy Blunt's wife works for a grocery store just like the people in our town is a Washington lobbyist for Kraft Foods Global, Inc., used to lobby for Altria, and is a fixture of "the old-school Georgetown social establishment."  

Four years ago today, Republicans in the House of Representatives chose a new Majority Leader to replace indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX).  Rep. Roy Blunt, DeLay's hand-picked lieutenant, was expected to fill the slot, and Blunt had publicly predicted an outright win in the three man race. 

Blunt won a plurality of the votes in the first ballot against Reps. John Boehner (R-OH) and John Shadegg (R-AZ) -- but came 6 votes shy of receiving a majority.  Shadegg came in third, and dropped out for the second ballot.  His support swung to Boehner, and Blunt was defeated on the second go-round by a 122-109 vote. 

The rejection of Blunt's bid to be Majority Leader was a clear repudiation of the Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff legacy, to which Blunt was and is inextricably linked. 

Update: The Post-Dispatch has also picked up the story. "White House party crashers partied with the Blunts? Pic says yes."

Roy Blunt's attempts to reinvent himself as a 'man of the people' do not appear to be going as planned this week.  The Politico:

Here's a picture you don't want to see if you're Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

Blunt, who's running for Senate in Missouri, is seen here with his wife, Abigail, posing with Tareq and Michaele Salahi at the 2008 Ambassadors Ball. This inside-Washington shot surely won't help Blunt with his people back home: The 13-year congressman and former Republican whip has found himself with a primary challenger.

The picture accompanies a new story about the couple in Washington Life magazine.

Blunt's response?  He was most definitely on the guest list for the the ball, because, you know, he goes to all the parties.

From Left: Abigail Blunt, Congressman Roy Blunt, Michaele Salahi and Tareq Salahi

I don't think I'll spend a thousand words explaining what is going down in this picture - but kudos to Washington Life Magazine, for posting a glamour shot of the Blunts with the Salahis.  In case you need a refresher, Michaela & Tareq Salahi are the notorious Virginian socialites who inproperly crashed a Whitehouse state dinner late last year to help them score a reality TV gig. 

Roy Blunt shouldn't really be considered a consummate Washington insider because he inaccurately predicted he'd be elected to replace Tom DeLay as Majority Leader in February 2006.  That's the argument made by columnist Bill McClellan in today's Post-Dispatch. He writes:  

When DeLay announced he would not seek to regain the position, Blunt announced he would run for the job. He issued a press release saying he had the support of the majority of the caucus, but when the secret ballots were counted, Blunt had lost.

That does not sound like an insider to me.

This doesn't make any sense, and completely ignores the actual reasons why Blunt lost the confidence of the GOP Caucus in 2006, and why they chose John Boehner of Ohio instead.  It also ignores that Blunt campaigned for the job by emphasizing his many years in the GOP leadership and "links to the [existing] leadership's system of power and favors." 

Following up on last week's discussion about (some) House Republicans' outrage with the addition of already-passed hate crimes legislation to the defense authorization bill, Clark at Show Me Progress reminds us that Roy Blunt had no problem tacking on additional measures when he, Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert were in charge.

In 2006, for example, Blunt and the elite GOP leadership "engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits," adding language to a DOD appropriations bill at the last minute, "without the approval of members of a House-Senate conference committee." From Show Me Progress:

Right before Christmas in 2005, the Republican leadership, which controlled both chambers of Congress and included Roy Blunt, decided that the defense authorization bill was missing something. Sure, it had already passed the House and the Senate AND negotiated through the conference committee that ironed any differences between the two versions, but Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, and then House Majority Whip Roy Blunt came to the conclusion that the vaccine liability bill which had not previously been able to make it through Congress should somehow be quietly put into the defense authorization bill.

Four years ago today, House Speaker Dennis Hastert named Roy Blunt to take over Tom DeLay's duties as Majority Leader after DeLay was indicted by a Texas grand jury on a charge of conspiring to violate political fundraising laws.

Blunt was one of DeLay's "staunchest defenders," and even promised to seek guidance from DeLay while he was under indictment. From a 2005 AP story about Blunt's ascendance and closeness to DeLay:

[Blunt] has been among DeLay's most visible defenders since the beginning of a probe into possible campaign fundraising violations. Blunt has contributed $5,000 to DeLay's legal defense fund and $10,000 to the DeLay Foundation, a children's charity.

He continued that support Wednesday after DeLay was indicted by a Texas grand jury on a charge of conspiring to violate political fundraising laws. Blunt vowed that DeLay would not stop exerting influence in the House leadership.

The Politico has a new "Top 50 Party Animals" feature today, celebrating "the partygoers that show up the most and throw the best events. Abigail Perlman Blunt (surprise!) made the cut.

A top lobbyist for the Kraft Food Co., Abigail Blunt is a longtime fixture on the society and charity circuit. The 47-year-old is also the wife of former House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, who is running for the U.S. Senate in 2010. Together, they are part of the old-school Georgetown social establishment, which keeps them in the pages of Washington’s glossy society magazines. (They even lived in one of JFK’s first homes.)...

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This may be one of those issues Roy Blunt claims to understand conceptually, if not personally. From The Joplin Independent:

"It can't get any tougher than this," was a remark made by Congressman Roy Blunt (R-MO) that brought nervous laughter from a crowd of realtors during their luncheon/meeting held at Twin Hills Country Club in Joplin yesterday. Blunt was referring to the slowdown in real estate sales that has trickled through the local economy.

Blunt also tweeted about his housing market conversation. 

It took Blunt all of one day to sell his Washington, DC, home this week -- for a cool $1.6 million.  KY3 has details on the sale.

It doesn't look Roy Blunt and Abigail Perlman will be without a Northwest DC home for too long. The Politico has the scoop:

More on man-of-the-people Roy Blunt's G-town presence

Yesterday it was reported that Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who is running for Senate, was shedding his $1.6M Georgetown mansion. (Also a JFK former home.)

Well, so much for the man of the people theory. It appears the Blunts have invested in some new land, also in G-town, that is for sale for $1.45M.

Here's a clip on the development. And this site, too.

 KY3:

Our NBC affiliate in Washington D.C. Is reporting that Republican Whip Roy Blunt's Georgetown home sold in just a day. Blunt wanted 1.6 (m) for the property.

The Georgetown townhouse where John F. Kennedy went on sale on Georgetown Metropolitan just yesterday.

Via the Washington City Paper, it looks like Roy Blunt's Georgetown mansion is for sale.  List price?  $1.595 million.  Key selling point?  It was apparently JFK's first house in Georgetown.

Interested parties may contact Washington Fine Properties.

Georgetown Metropolitan has details and pictures:

JFK’s first house in Georgetown is currently for sale. From 1947 to 1949, then Congressmen John Kennedy lived at 1528 31st. St. with his sister Eunice Kennedy.

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As we noted this morning, a Washington Examiner story posted yesterday was changed after publication and distrubution to remove the words, "having gone through an affair" from this sentence: 

Rep. Roy Blunt, the former House Majority Leader who is now a GOP candidate for governor in Missouri, is no stranger to scandal, having gone through a public divorce and remarriage under the scrutiny of the press.

KY3's Dave Catanese reported this afternoon that a Blunt spokesman called the Washington Examiner sentence "incredibly inaccurate," though it's not clear from Catanese's story if that's a reference to the removed language or the assertion that Blunt is running for Governor. 

The Examiner does not state that a correction or change has been made anywhere in the current version of the article.