Group questions Foster's experience

In clamoring to discredit an obscure group's claim that Bill Foster padded his political resume, the Democratic congressional candidate's campaign team appears to have done more harm than good.

Allow me to explain.

Foster sent out a news release Thursday decrying the conservative Majority Accountability Project's accusation that Foster embellished his experience working for U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania.

Highlighting a Foster campaign mailer describing how Foster was "serving on Murphy's congressional staff" before deciding to run for office himself, the Washington-based Majority Accountability Project claimed that House payroll records don't list Foster's name anywhere on Murphy's staff. Foster's news release clarified that Foster "was an unpaid staffer after Murphy's election." But working for free for a member of Congress could be considered a violation of House ethics rules, Majority Accountability Project pointed out Friday.

Volunteers are allowed if they're doing it for educational purposes or if their assistance "does not supplant the normal and regular duties of paid employees," according to the ethics code. Foster, described as an "unpaid science adviser" and "legislative fellow" to Murphy, falls under that exemption, a spokesman for Murphy said.

"He is well within the (ethics) rules," said Tom Bowen, a Foster campaign spokesman.

Both Bowen and Murphy's spokesman criticized the Majority Accountability Project as having "no credibility."

More mudslinging: In their news release, headlined "The Forecast Calls for Mud," Foster's team called the Majority Accountability Project's attack "just the beginning of the nasty politics that are guaranteed to come before the March 8 special election." Yet a few hours later, Foster sent out another news release touting his first campaign commercial of the general election season: a 30-second spot attacking his Republican opponent, Jim Oberweis. Hoping to capitalize on anti-Bush momentum, the commercial paints Oberweis and the president with the same brush, saying: "Jim Oberweis says we should be in Iraq for another 10 years -- and just accept George Bush's stay the course strategy."

Hastert a ballot star: Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, the man Oberweis and Foster are vying to succeed, proved once again to be a popular candidate Tuesday by getting the most votes among the 24 GOP national convention delegates on the ballot in both Kane and Kendall counties. Hastert, a Mitt Romney supporter, got more votes as a Romney delegate than Romney himself got in Kane and Kendall -- meaning that many voters who didn't vote for Romney essentially gave him one-quarter of their support by choosing Hastert.