Live Updates
Share ThisSep 22, 2008
Palm Beach Post - Mahoney camp fires back on residency
The campaign of Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, who’s been under fire for registering to vote at a barn with an apartment rather than at his homesteaded primary residence, called Republican challenger Tom Rooney a hypocrite today upon learning that Rooney was registered to vote for five years at the Palm Beach Kennel Club dog track.
While Rooney was in law school and then in the Army in Texas and at West Point from 1998 to 2003, the address on his voter registration was the Kennel Club, which is owned by the Rooney family.
“He used his father’s office address as his mailing address to make it easier to forward his mail,” Rooney spokesman Jeff Ostermayer said. “This was an innocent mistake to include his voter registration and it was corrected. Tom is registered to vote, lives and takes his homestead exemption in the district, unlike Tim Mahoney.”
Mahoney, who represents congressional District 16, has a homesteaded house that he calls his principal residence in Palm Beach Gardens in District 22. But he’s registered to vote at the barn with an apartment in rural Caloosa in District 16, where a spokeswoman last week said Mahoney plans to build a home.
Mahoney campaign spokesman Marc Goldberg criticized Rooney for being registered at the track.
“In those five years, he clearly had no intention to live at the dog track and yet he is hypocritically calling out Congressman Mahoney for being registered at his Caloosa property, where he does intend to live,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg also said the Kennel Club address “calls into serious question the honesty of Tom Rooney’s repeated assertions that he has no connection to the Palm Beach Kennel Club.”
The dog track is owned by Investment Corp. of Palm Beach, a Rooney family business. Tom Rooney’s father was the track’s longtime president and his brother runs it now. Tom Rooney says he does not have any involvement in the ownership or operation of the track, though his children benefit from a trust that owns stock in Investment Corp.
