Corruption scandals are piling up for Democrats in states across the country as the party enters in to what is expected to be a tough election cycle in 2014.
Democratic officials in New York, Illinois, North Carolina, and California were raided by the FBI last week in unrelated incidents. Three Democratic state senators in California were suspended by the Democratic-dominated state senate as they deal with criminal cases.
The incidents have commentators on both sides of the aisle considering the implications for 2014 elections, according to the Washington Times.
The sheer number of federal arrests and raids stunned liberal commentators such as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who noted last week that California Democrats lost their supermajority in the state Senate because of the inactive status of the three lawmakers.
"[T]here are now three Democratic state senators with federal criminal indictments against them just this session resulting already in eight felony convictions," Ms. Maddow said. "And yes, the Republican Party is essentially defunct in most of California and probably beyond reviving, but if anything can bring them back, it’s probably days like this."
On the other side are conservatives asking whether the Obama administration’s Justice Department is deliberately cleaning house on behalf of the Democratic Party now to prevent the scandals from cropping up in the weeks before the Nov. 4 elections.
"It is entirely possible that the head honchos of the Democrat Party are basically behind an effort to take out all of their bad apples before the election; make them old news by the time the election comes around," conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh said on his Friday show.