Unless something else bubbles up in the newz, this will probably be my last McCullough posting.
I'd like to take you back 13 years, 11 months and 30 days to where it all began.
The date was April 13, 2007 (hey, that's exactly 14 years tomorrow!) and the main story at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was Bob Hoover piece on the death of Kurt Vonnegut.
That day, The Dow ended the day up at 12,609.85 and a copy of The P-G would have cost you $.50.
So it goes.
Anyway, just below the Vonnegut obituary and right next to a Washington Post piece about a suicide bomber breaching the Green Zone in Iraq and killing 8, there was this piece by Dennis Roddy.
It began thusly:
The single largest donor to Allegheny County candidates this year is a 90-year-old Upper St. Clair widow who hasn't voted for seven years and says she never agreed to give $10,000 each to four Republican candidates, including one for Superior Court and three for Allegheny County Council.
Her name was Shirley Jordan and during a discussion with her about the donations she said:
My God, that's terrible. I would never give $10,000 to politics. I can tell you that.
This follows directly:
She blamed the donation on her attorney, Charles McCullough, himself a candidate for County Council. Mr. McCullough took control of Mrs. Jordan's affairs following a court dispute that began after she was taken in 2005 to St. Clair Hospital, where a doctor diagnosed her with moderate dementia. A Common Pleas Court judge later declared her incapacitated.
"I have an attorney who is ambitious to be active in politics," she said. "It was not my decision. I knew nothing about it. Then I find he has control of everything and he's spending it right and left. He's a cheap politician."
Thus began the long long unraveling of Charles P. (Chuck) McCullough.