Dirty Politician: Katherine Harris

It turns out Katherine Harris has been lying about not knowing what defense contractor MZM wanted from her in return for bundles of $2,000 donations from its employees, which were actually laundered donations from MZM owner Mitchell Wade, who bribed Duke Cunningham. MZM wanted help with a defense appropriation, and Harris attempted to get the money for MZM, though she was ultimately unsuccessful.

Dirty Politician: Rick Santorum

The largest known donor to Rick Santorum's charity, The Operation Good Neighbor Foundation, is Preferred Real Estate, Inc., which donated $25,000 in 2002. Preferred Real Estate officers and spouses also donated $22,350 to Santorum's re-election campaign and $6,000 to his Political Action Committee, America's Foundation.

Preferred Real Estate is the developer of the Wharf at Rivertown project in Chester, PA, the site of a former Peco Energy plant, which it bought for $1. Santorum's campaign web site boasts of winning $8.5 million in federal funding for the Preferred Real Estate riverfront project, in the form of a HUD grant. He also obtained another $6 million in highway development earmarks to build access to the riverfront project from Interstate 95 and U.S. 322.

More at the Philadelphia Daily News (via Talking Points Memo).