As the media was showering the White Knight of the corporate corruption scandals with praise for his efforts in uncovering radio payola (read Alex Tabarrok’s provocative analysis of payola here), the New York Post discovers the following:

A giant insurer investigated by state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer got what was widely viewed as a slap on the wrist just days after Spitzer pocketed a $25,000 campaign donation from a high-ranking former employee, The Post has learned.

An ex-senior vice president of Aon Corp. — who sources say still consults for the company and spends time at its offices — made the contribution to Spitzer’s gubernatorial war chest three days before a settlement with the international insurance broker was announced, records show.

Spitzer of course has vowed to return any campaign contributions from corporations his office is investigating, but that apparently doesn’t apply to those firms’ attorneys. More reason why Spitzer should reason as AG while he runs for governor.

Fun media outrage experiment: Compare the number of outlets that covered this story with the number that covered Spitzer’s payola investigation.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 at 9:22 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.