GOP Rep. Buyer, with wife ill, won't seek new term INDIANAPOLIS -- Republican Rep. Steve Buyer announced Friday that he will not seek re-election this fall and will leave Congress after 18 years because his wife is ill.
Buyer choked back tears as he stood next to his wife, Joni, on Friday, saying she had been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease.
"As part of her prognosis she has been advised to de-stress her life," he said. "Now is the time for me to step back. It's been an honor."
Buyer, 51, is the top Republican on the House Veterans Affairs Committee. He was the committee's chairman for two years before Democrats won the House majority in the 2006 election.
He has faced questions in recent months about a private scholarship foundation he created that had raised more than $880,000 since 2003 without awarding any scholarships. He has defended his handling of the foundation, but didn't mention it during Friday's announcement and didn't take any questions.
Buyer represents Indiana's heavily Republican 4th District, which stretches from the Lafayette area, through the western and southern suburbs of Indianapolis to Bedford. He won re-election in 2008 with 60 percent of the vote even as Barack Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1964.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012902150.html A Mulligan for Ethically Challenged GOP Rep? Indiana Republican Rep. Steve Buyer formed the Frontier Foundation in 2003 to provide scholarships to students in his state—and since then his charity has raised an impressive $880,000 in corporate donations. Unfortunately, none of that money has found its way to needy undergrads. It has, however, paid for a lot of Buyer's swanky golf junkets. Speaking recently with CBS Evening News about his foundation, the nine-term congressman—a graduate of the Citadel with a degree in business administration and Frontier's "honorary chairman"—suggested that he "was so focused on making sure that we were legal, that I probably didn't pay as close attention as I should have on, quote, appearances."
And the appearances aren't pretty. After a thorough review of Frontier's tax filings, the government accountability organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has recommended that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) investigate Buyer and what they refer to as his "so-called charity." CREW alleges Buyer has used Frontier "to foot golf fundraisers at exclusive resorts where he hobnobs with corporate donors—who also contribute to his campaign committee and leadership
." In 2008, the most recent year for which tax returns were available, the foundation wrote off over $25,000 in expenses for "meals" and "travel for fund-raising." These fundraising outings got the golf-loving Republican onto the links at Disney World, the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, and the Phoenix-area Boulders resort.
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/01/republican-rep-steve-buyers-ethics-mulligan
Wishing his wife the best in her battle.