Kruger’s Campaign Expenses Show Depth Of Vanity, Corruption

I know we already posted today about State Senator Carl Kruger, but I just came across this article in Courier-Life exposing the extravagance of that shyster, and his smugness in rebutting it.

Kruger’s been dipping into his $2.1 million campaign war chest – the largest in the State Legislature – to pay for all kinds of crud unrelated to getting reelected. Of course, it’s been a longtime tradition for state representatives to use leftovers from their reelection campaigns to fund a more comfortable living situation, but the shocking degree to which Kruger is making it rain shows just how far out of touch he is with his constituents.

Here are just some of the expenses, according to Courier-Life:

• $8,630 on hotels
• $13,000 on restaurants
• $8,939 on his car
• $302 on his iTunes account

Now, I won’t deny the man his iTunes account. You can’t get re-elected when you’re all wound up, so Kruger needs to chill out in his overpriced hotel room with an iPod full of Diana Ross, Village People and Justin Bieber.

But the real expenses that make me suspicious are the combined $90,000 he spent on his Avenue U and East 22nd Street office. Not only is it illegal to use your district office for campaigning, but the inexplicable amounts he spent on certain items appears inflated, making one wonder where the heck that money is really going.

Just take a look:

• More than $23,000 on office furniture
• Nearly $1,000 for plumbing in his office bathroom
• $288 on bathroom supplies
• $540.65 on door mats
• $4,700 for paint and wallpaper (two of the walls have floor-to-ceiling windows)
• $4,844 on tiles (his office is carpeted)
• $545 for landscaping (the office has no lawns or gardens)
• $10,500 to a “New Jersey air conditioning and heating system company with two different addresses — one of which doesn’t exist”

So what did this greed-ball have to say about it when Courier-Life contacted him? Kruger boasted that his office was “beautiful” and that “not a dime of taxpayer money was used.”

There’s a lot of belly-aching about the incompetence of our state legislators, and many of them need to go. But Kruger exceeds all of them when it comes to greed, corruption and arrogance. He’s got to be the first to go – multi-million dollar campaign budget or not.