Today’s Manchester Union Leader has a story that stopped me dead in my tracks; “GOP activist questions Congress candidate Guinta’s finances.”

Full.Stop.

Unless you are Charlie Rangel you do not wake up in the morning, slap your forehead, and remember a $500,000.00 bank account you have failed…twice…to disclose. This is, according to the Union Leader, exactly what has happened in the case of Frank Guinta. This revelation raises every political red flag I can muster in light of Pelosi’s “most ethical Congress in History” and her Democrat sidekicks Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters:

CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE Frank Guinta lists a previously unreported personal bank account holding between $250,000 and $500,000 in new financial-disclosure documents filed with the House of Representatives.

The disclosure comes after Guinta loaned his campaign $100,000 on March 28 and $125,000 more on June 27, bringing the total amount Guinta has loaned his campaign so far to $245,000.
[snip]
In an interview Wednesday, Guinta denied that he has received any loan, maintaining that the savings accrued from years of work and frugal living. His previous reports listed three bank accounts with combined savings of between $17,000 and $80,000. Asked how he could have forgotten to list an account with $250,000 to $500,000 not once but twice in earlier disclosure reports, Guinta called the omission “an inadvertent oversight.”

Indeed. So was (were) Rangel’s “alleged” transgressions. In fact, a closer look at Charlie’s shenanigans (page 35, Count IX) as penned by the House Ethics Committee sounds eerily similar to Guinta’s predicament and leads me to think there’s a bigger problem here than just a bad memory.

The Union Leader piece rightly asks why Guinta would even HAVE that much money in a single account given FDIC coverage when you consider his other disclosures which prove him to be fairly savvy in matters of investing money. I ask the same question. Politicians like this, the GOP absolutely does not need right now.

Having been a Mayor and needing to manage big budgets, and with a fairly extensive Political resume, I can’t be expected to believe a $500,000.00 memory hole is just an innocent mistake…especially when you do the math over the course of his campaign.

The Political Ruling Class in Washington has made a complete mess of this country, and it needs to be wiped clean of its institutionalized elitism, corruption, and graft. We’re routinely lied to, routinely taken advantage of, and routinely presumed too ignorant to know any better. That must end when the 112th Congress takes its oath of office. Guinta, if this news turns out to be as it appears, does not belong in DC when that swearing-in takes place.

Let’s look a little deeper at this…it gets uglier.

I did a little digging and found this Nashua telegraph piece which came out shortly after Guinta’s June loan to the campaign:

Just where did Republican congressional candidate Frank Guinta get $125,000 to loan to his own 1st District campaign?

His financial disclosure form that covers 2009 showed his $72,000 salary as mayor of Manchester and that his wife worked for Catholic Medical Center.

They own a rental property along with their home, but didn’t show on the form any significant rent or the candidate taking out another mortgage to produce this kind of cash.

Campaign manager Michael Biundo said Guinta merely has liquidated some of his stock market and mutual fund assets, and that there’s more where that comes from.

“He’s not a wealthy man, but has resources beyond that which he has already contributed to the campaign,’’ Biundo said. “Those are personal loans without collateral for which he expects to get back in repayment.’’

So, if I have this right, Guinta (“not a wealthy man”) can afford to squirrel away (and forget all about) $500,000.00 in some obscure bank account? Have I got that right? And all this on a $72,000.00 salary and a rental property that generates no appreciable revenue? Really?

The Telegraph continues:

Indeed, the forms show that at year’s end Guinta had up to $100,000 in a Fidelity Prime Fund and up to $50,000 in a Putnam Fixed Income Fund.

He also had nine other stocks or securities that were worth up to $15,000 apiece, as well as an international fund that has as much as $50,000 in it.

The questions came from the financial disclosure filing from the House Ethics Committee that typically requires the incumbent or would-be candidate to report on the year’s finances within 30 days of making that report.

The report filed in May by Guinta ordinarily would have shown him moving some of his money out, which he did in the early spring to jump-start the campaign. But as above, the detail ended as of last December.

“Our next financial disclosure in 2011 will include all of that,’’ Biundo said.

This just doesn’t add up. I’ll ignore the fact that he has that much money in an “international fund” but I can’t let go the fact that these numbers don’t add up to a richness that can afford to forget about a $500,000.00 piggy bank growing dust up in the attic. Sorry-I don’t want to call Guinta a liar, but the math just doesn’t work to his advantage here.

We need a better answer than “inadvertent oversight” from Mr. Guinta. We certainly don’t need him in DC only to find himself in the same position Rangel and Waters find themselves in today. We need him to be focusing on fixing the mess those two, and a host of others, have made of this country; defending himself against a scandal is not what we need him to be doing once he gets there.

I have said I would vote Guinta were he to clear the primary. Further, I have tried in recent weeks to point out issues I have with some of the things coming out of Guinta’s campaign, AND made suggestions on areas I felt strongly that he needed to improve in order to make me feel better about my support. The Union Leader piece, and the Telegraph piece…and a lengthening trail of head-scratching revelations… have all but quashed that.