Roy Exum
I don’t spend much time reading about politicians who want to be the next president because, at this point, it is all of bunch of blather as far as I’m concerned.
But it raised my right eyebrow this morning when I read that Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is after the Republican nomination, reportedly said in a speech at a rural Iowa college over the weekend that “a child would be better off with a dead parent than a gay one.”
I can’t believe anybody would say something like that, much less be that stupid in an open forum, and then I saw where Fred Thompson, another Republican contender, was under fire because it had been learned one of his campaign chairmen was a convicted drug dealer.
Since the drug deal happened over 25 years ago, I sloughed it off because anyone can change. But then I read the guy was Phil Martin and – bingo – everything did indeed change because I knew of a guy who used to live up around Ooltewah named Phil Martin and he was evermore a character.
In Sunday morning’s Washington Post, there appeared a huge story that confirmed he is the same character who once lived around here and you need to read “Thompson Adviser Has Criminal Past” because the lengthy diatribe is juicer than a Saturday night steak.
Not only did it confirm Phil once copped a guilty plea for selling 11 pounds of marijuana out of the trunk of a ’73 Cadillac down in Florida, it quoted Congressman Zach Wamp as calling the guy a “mover and a shaker.”
To many it will be unbelievable that Martin never did any jail time, especially when he also pleaded “no contest” to cocaine trafficking and conspiracy, but to others it is just part of the tale that would be an instant best-seller and one heck of a movie.
The whole thing was rekindled last week when somebody dug up the fact that Martin, who is one of Fred Thompson’s “first day founders,” provides his Cessna 560 Citation jet to the former Tennessee senator so he and his staff can go from one whistle stop to the next.
Well, the magnifying glass the cut-throats in the media use is a thick one and the next thing you know those research people are cross-matching and referencing and Googling and end up painting quite a portrait of Phil L. Martin, age 47.
To Thompson’s credit he said on yesterday’s “Meet The Press” he had no idea Phil Martin was once convicted of drug trafficking and conspiracy. Then, with a jaw stuck out like some Hollywood actor, the candidate later told reporters he wasn’t about to throw his friend “under the bus.”
The Washington Post story, however, intimates Phil is quite used to “being under the bus.” For instance, it mentions a $200,000 lawsuit with former partner Scott Hodges, a Chattanooga surgeon, that was settled out of court.
Then it goes into the fact that after Phil donated $75,000 to the Republican Party between 1992-2002, he became so ingrained in the machine he flew around on a jet with some candidates including “Hollywood Fred” and that the airplane was owned by Cleveland’s Toby McKenzie.
The story tells about how Phil and Toby had a falling out in 2006, and how that lawsuit was also – you guessed it – settled out of court. Still pending is a case Phil and his former partner Delwin Huggins have against Ellsworth McKee, who claims he loaned the two $8 million apiece and they haven’t paid it back.
I am telling you, the story has more twists and turns than a Smokey Mountains road. It even quotes Phil’s lawyer, John P. Konvalinka, who told the Post that “to some, Martin's various disputes over money may seem significant, but in fact they are not. For a man engaged in 1,000 transactions in a year, he doesn't have near the amount of litigation that some of my clients do."
Are you kidding me? The more you read, the more the whole thing becomes akin to some pulp fiction novel and gives a new brilliance to the age-old adage, “Politics makes for strange bedfellows.”
royexum@aol.com