Former GOP House Aide Nabbed Trying to Sell Inaugural Tickets

[Joanne98]

Selling inauguration tickets isn't illegal, not yet anyway. But it was still embarrassing for one former congressional aide who now works at a powerful lobbying firm when she was caught this week trying to sell tickets to Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony for big bucks.

The former aide is Gina Santucci, who now works as associate general counsel at BGR Holding, the lobbying, public relations and financial advisory firm formerly known as Barbour Griffith & Rogers, founded by current Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and veteran GOP political strategist Ed Rogers.

Until recently, Santucci worked as legislative counsel to Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), whose office received its share of inaugural tickets on Tuesday. Santucci was on the congressman's distribution list, Poe's office acknowledged when contacted by the Sleuth.

But Santucci apparently had no intention of going to the inauguration herself. Her entrepreneurial spirit took over, and she headed straight for Craigslist, where she listed four of the highly coveted tickets to Obama's inaugural ceremony and fetched a speedy offer from someone willing to pay $875 a piece.

The email exchange between Santucci, who used her real name and personal email address, and the prospective buyer, who used the name "Jackie Kentucky" from a gmail address, was forwarded to the Sleuth.

"Jackie - Just to confirm, you'll pay $3500 for 4 tickets? Are you able to pay in cash?" Santucci wrote. "I am picking up the tickets on Wednesday afternoon and will be able to meet you after that."

Jackie Kentucky wrote back, agreeing to pay cash if Santucci could produce a letter or email proving authenticity of the inauguration tickets.

"Yes, I have an email, but will redact information identifying Member of Congress as he is a personal friend of mine and I do not want to cause embarrassment," Santucci replied. She added that she could thrown in an extra ticket, upping the price to $4,500 for five tickets.

Contacted by the Sleuth, Poe's spokeswoman, Deeann Thigpen, acknowledged the congressman's office intended to give Santucci tickets to the inaugural swearing-in. But she said the congressman didn't expect Santucci would sell them.

"Unfortunately it's not illegal to sell the tickets," Thigpen said, adding, "but that was not the intention of our office." She said Santucci would no longer be receiving tickets from Poe's office.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2009/01/selling_inauguration_tickets_i.html

Greedy selfish ass republicans. I hope they all starve to death!

[AspenRose]

1. Busted

Greedy, selfish-ass republicans is RIGHT

[MADem]

2. They're doing this all over the Hill. It's not illegal but it's not nice, either.

And that greed is crossing party lines, I suspect. At these prices, the temptation is enormous:

Demand for the free, standing-room-only tickets to the swearing-in on the west front of the U.S. Capitol has been so high, scalpers have tried to sell them online for as much as $40,000 apiece, according to media reports.

Those without tickets are likely to be stuck a mile or more from the Capitol, watching the inauguration on oversized television screens.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090106/NEWS10/901060358/-1/ENT06


That plan to pass lame duck legislation to make scalping tickets illegal apparently didn't go anywhere... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/10/senator-asks-sites-not-to_n_142863.html