Dems bash Kean's tax vote
2006-09-18
Source: Home News Tribune
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rss feedDemocrats, including Gov. Jon S. Corzine, heaped criticism on Republican U.S. Senate candidate Thomas Kean Jr. yesterday after reports he had voted for tax breaks for a health-care company the same day his campaign received donations from it.
A spokeswoman for Kean, a state senator from Westfield, dismissed the allegations that the votes in 2005 put a chink in Kean's ethics-reformer plating.
"You see in the paper today, the timing of a campaign contribution at the same time you are making a vote," Corzine said, without naming Kean.
Corzine was fielding questions about the guilty-of-corruption plea yesterday by former Senate President John Lynch, a powerful Democrat from Middlesex County, and about the federal probe of Kean's opponent, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-Hoboken.
Corzine's choice of words - "the paper today" - referenced a report that Kean had voted twice to allow Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey to keep a $40 million tax exemption on the same day Kean had received more than $17,000 in contributions from 17 of the company's executives and their family members.
That was in late June 2005, as state lawmakers tried to cobble together a state budget.
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