Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin, The Examiner
2006-09-26 09:00:00.0
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Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin cover people, power and politics in the beltway each weekday. Email them at yan@dcexaminer.com .

Former Skin Shuler linked to tax-delinquent firm

Former Redskins top draft pick and current candidate for Congress Heath Shuler found himself in a tricky spot on Friday when he learned that a real-estate business that bears his name owed $69,000 in back taxes.

Shuler and his brother founded Knoxville, Tenn.-based Heath Shuler Real Estate in 1998, but five years later sold all but a 20 percent stake to four other men, who kept the firm’s name.

An Associated Press investigation found that the business had been chronically late in paying city and county property taxes and brought the information to the attention of Shuler’s campaign. Shuler is running against eight-term Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C., in western North Carolina.

Shuler’s attorney, Jason Rudd, said he threatened the owners with legal action unless they paid and began the process of removing Shuler’s name from the business.

He told the AP that a contract provision allows Shuler to remove his name if it is “used in any way that brings into question the reputation, ethics or morals of J. Heath Shuler.”

In an e-mail he wrote to co-owner Robert Browder, Rudd said that the “ongoing refusal to operate [the] business in accordance with the law is causing extreme embarrassment to Heath.”

As of late Friday, Browder informed Rudd that all taxes had been paid.

After starring at quarterback at the University of Tennessee, Shuler was taken by the Redskins with the third overall pick in the 1994 draft. His NFL career never took off, however, and he was out of football by the end of the decade.

Liberal laughing for conservatives

Facing some tough races as November nears, Republicans don’t always have a lot to smile about nowadays.

But comedian Evan Sayet is looking to change all that with his three-night, “Right To Laugh” stand-up stint at the George Washington University, which began last night.

“I make fun — almost exclusively — of modern liberals,” Sayet says. “I make fun of how they think.”

Sayet’s career has taken him from gigs on “The Arsenio Hall Show” to “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” to “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”

“Evan’s a very funny guy,” says Grover Norquist (who will show off his own comedic chops at Wednesday’s “Funniest Celebrity” contest at the D.C. Improv). “I hope conservatives can take the advantage in comedy much in the same way that we’ve done in talk radio and the Internet.”

David Frum, David Keene, Ari Fleischer and Laura Ingraham are all expected to come see Sayet’s performance.

So how will Sayet turn Republicans’ frowns upside down? He shared one of his favorite right-wing one-liners with Yeas & Nays: “Don’t get mad at America for using 60 percent of the world’s energy supply — it’s because we have all the plugs.”

I don’t see dead people

Washington’s lovers of the morbid and the macabre will surely be disappointed to know that they’ll be unable to see skinned and posed human cadavers in town anytime soon.

A controversial traveling exhibition of actual human cadavers, organs and other body parts, known as “Bodies: The Exhibition,” has been making the rounds to Tampa, New York and other major cities.

The intact bodies, most obtained from China, are struck in such poses as a orchestra conductor, a soccer player and a volleyball player. Other items include a set of blackened lungs and a brain damaged by stroke.

But a source in the Washington Convention and Tourism Corporation said the company that hosts the show, Premier Exhibitions, has been unable to secure space in town.

It’s unclear whether that’s because there is no space available, or because no one will have them. A spokeswoman for Premier did not return phone calls Monday.

Cheney hits the century mark

During Vice President Dick Cheney’s fundraising visits to Wisconsin and Michigan on Monday, his staff told assembled press that the political events were his 99th and 100th of this election cycle.

A Cheney staffer said that the beneficiaries of his presence include 49 House candidates, 18 Senate candidates, four gubernatorial candidates and 29 state and national party committees.

Fifty-six of Cheney’s events have been closed to the press; the other 44 open.

Monday’s events raised more than $1.1 million total for Republican candidates.

Yeas & Nays fever

With only four weeks of Yeas & Nays under our belt, looks like we’re really catching on. We couldn’t help but pat ourselves on the back when we saw this graphic on Connecticut Senate candidate Ned Lamont’s Web site.

Speakeasy

“Bourbon drinkers tend to be Republican; gin is more often a Democrat’s drink.”

– The Los Angeles Times’ Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, discussing Republican efforts at “micro-targeting” narrow blocs of voters