海角大神

The reelection campaign of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell was sent into something of a shock on Friday thanks to the sudden and somewhat unexpected announcement that Jesse Benton, who was managing his reelection and had managed Rand Paul鈥檚 2010 campaign and Ron Paul鈥檚 2008 and 2012 presidential campaign, was stepping aside with less than nine weeks to go until Election Day.

I tend to agree that this incident is unlikely to have that much of an impact on McConnell鈥檚 campaign going forward. To a large degree, hiring Benton as his campaign manager was obviously a move by McConnell to forge an alliance with Kentucky鈥檚 junior senator. In addition to managing Paul鈥檚 Senate campaign and both of his father鈥檚 recent presidential campaigns, Benton is also married to Valori Payett, who happens to be Ron Paul鈥檚 granddaughter and Senator Paul鈥檚 niece. Given all of that, it has never been clear just how much Benton was actually running the campaign on his own, and how much he was basically just there as a figurehead. Indeed, this isn鈥檛 the first time Benton has gotten in trouble since going to work for McConnell; last year he was forced to deal with the public revelation of private comments he made that were quite critical of his boss. The allegations out of Iowa, which I鈥檒l discuss in a bit more detail below, may have just been the last straw. In any case, McConnell seems to have moved quickly in naming senior adviser Josh Holmes as his new campaign manager.

The allegations that led to Benton鈥檚 resignation, meanwhile, involve a scandal in Iowa that is still unfolding. At its heart, it involves a Republican state senator in the Hawkeye State who famously switched his allegiance from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul on the eve of the Iowa Caucuses in 2012. At the time, and in the years that have followed, there have been allegations of bribery and other illegal activities directed at both the Paul and Bachmann campaigns. Earlier this week, the former state senator in question, Kent Sorenson, plead guilty to charges that he concealed payments from Paul鈥檚 campaign that coincided with his shift in endorsements. By all accounts, this plea is in exchange for Sorenson鈥檚 cooperation in the ongoing federal grand jury investigations which, according to Open Secrets, involve two separate grand juries aimed at the Bachmann and Paul campaign鈥檚 respectively. As the overall chairman of the Paul campaign in 2012, Benton would seem to be a natural person of interest in such an investigation, although it鈥檚 worth noting that nobody has made any allegation that either he or anyone involved in the national campaign was involved in anything that went on prior to Sorenson鈥檚 shift in loyalty. No doubt, though, the questions circling around the campaign were becoming a potential embarrassment for McConnell.

Where the Iowa investigation leads is hard to tell, but it seems likely that there will be more indictments to come. Stay tuned.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/