Top fundraiser for Rudy -- and Bush -- had some trouble paying federal taxes

Hey, it's a lot easier to make campaign contributions when you have extra disposable income from not paying taxes. But shouldn't it be a big concern for a campaign -- and the media -- when a top "bundler" for Rudy Giuliani wasn't paying taxes. Blue Jersey has the details and asks the right questions.

First the details:

For example, take the subject of this post: Ocean County Republican Chairman and Rudy Giuliani '08 bundler, George Gilmore. Maybe you're familiar with Gilmore, who is without question the most powerful Republican boss in the state. He's a partner in a lucrative law firm, Gilmore & Monahan, which handles millions of taxpayer dollars every year. He's a fund-raising dynamo, becoming a "Pioneer" (bundling more than $100,000) for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. But there's one thing a lot of people didn't know about Gilmore until recently.

He's had trouble paying his taxes.

At least that's what the Ocean County Observer says. Last week, they reported that "county tax records still show that Gilmore has a tax lien for $158,716.74 in outstanding [individual federal income] tax payments from 2005." According to the Observer, Gilmore paid his liens just a few weeks ago -- the exact same time citizens and reporters began researching the story.

According to WhiteHouseForSale.org, a site maintained by the national nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, Rudy Giuliani disclosed George Gilmore's name as a designated bundler for his 2008 campaign.

Then, the questions:

What Giuliani should do is a no-brainer: if Gilmore had the means to raise $100,000 for Bush in 2004, he had the means to pay his income taxes in 2005. To absolve him because he paid them off when people started asking questions is absurd. Giuliani needs to boot him from his campaign, and do it fast.

Now the question should be, 'How much money did Gilmore bundle for Giuliani while he left more than $158,000 of his taxes unpaid?' In other words, how much is Giuliani going to return, or give to charity? Hillary returned upwards of $800,000 in the Hsu case.

We're waiting for the answers.

If scrutiny of bundlers is good for the Democrats, it's good for Rudy. Didn't he