Akin's tardy filings of overlooked pension payments contribute to troubled campaign narrative
Republican U.S. Senate nominee Todd Akin can’t seem to stay out of the news, and for the wrong reasons.
On Thursday, his congressional spokesman acknowledged that the congressman had failed to report his annual pension payment from the state of Missouri on his congressional disclosure forms for the last 10 years.
The omitted amount totaled almost $130,000. Communications director Steve Taylor blamed the failure to include the payments -- which generally ranged from $13,000-$15,000 a year – as “an unintentional oversight.”
Taylor declined to say how the oversight was discovered, other than to observe that “there was some inquiry and we looked into it and corrected the record."
The revisions aren't the first for Akin, who in 2011 had to file amended disclosure reports because he omitted some property that he co-owned.
Akin earlier also has come under fire for late property-tax payments on his home and vehicles in St. Louis County in 2003, 2004 and 2010.
The latest amended reports were filed Tuesday, along with a letter in which Akin told the House Ethics Committee that “I regret any inconvenience that this may cause…”
The inconvenience may be felt more by his campaign, which may find it tougher to press his attacks against U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., over her family's tardy payment of back property taxes owned on their private aircraft (now sold), and his accusations that her family got rich over federal stimulus payments (which the senator and her campaign have denied, using federal records to back up their case.)
More negative news about Akin also makes it tougher for him shift the contest into a referendum of McCaskill's record.
Akin is still seeking to recoup from the continued fallout from his August assertion that victims of “legitimate rape’’ don’t get pregnant.
The latest chapter was earlier this week, when opponents began circulating a 2008 video of Akin asserting on the House floor that abortion doctors are “terrorists’’ and sometimes perform the procedure on women who are not pregnant.
Planned Parenthood officials in St. Louis were among those condemning his comments, and add that the required pre-abortion tests would make it impossible to do procedure on someone who is not pregnant.
Akin campaign spokesman Ryan Hite said there has been no negative fallout from the 2008 video, saying that the congressman stands by his statements.
Meanwhile, McCaskill's congressional disclosure reports do include her pension from her tenure in state government.
