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Vice President is guest at
lucrative luncheon in Luzerne County.
Vice President Dick Cheney spent a few hours in Luzerne County on Friday helping U.S. Sen.
Rick Santorum raise money for his 2006 re-election campaign.
Cheney was the featured guest at a luncheon held at a
private residence in Jackson Township.
Guests at the invitation-only event paid $1,000 to attend and $5,000 a couple
to have their picture taken with the vice president.
The two-hour event raised about $300,000 for Santorum and $260,000
for a Republican State Committee account that benefits federal candidates running in Pennsylvania.
The event was closed
to the press and not well publicized by the Santorum campaign. In a story Friday, the Citizens Voice of Wilkes-Barre reported
that Santorum's office declined to confirm that Cheney would attend.
The campaign manager for state Treasurer Bob Casey
Jr., Santorum's likely challenger, suggested that Santorum wanted to minimize coverage of the event because of Cheney's low
approval ratings and the scrutiny his chief of staff, Lewis I. ''Scooter'' Libby, is getting in the investigation into the
leaked identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
''Santorum should take this opportunity to ask Cheney what really happened
with the CIA leak,'' the campaign manager, Jay Reiff, said in a news release.
Santorum spokeswoman Virginia Davis cited
the 15,000 invitations and stories in local newspapers as evidence the event was well publicized.
She criticized the
Casey campaign for continuing to raise funds in September while officials were trying to raise money for hurricane relief.
Davis said Santorum canceled several fundraising events at the time and postponed the Cheney event, which was originally scheduled
for Sept. 23.
Casey's campaign attributed the postponement to the fact Cheney was scheduled to undergo knee surgery
on Sept. 24. It was just one of several GOP fundraisers that Cheney postponed that week, according to Roll Call, a Washington
newspaper that covers Congress.
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