A state senator
from Iowa defends his innocence after a federal probe
finds he may have had a hand in a case of extortion.
Iowa’s
highest ranking openly gay elected official has been
indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for
extortion, facing fines up to $250,000 and 20 years in
prison. State Senator Matt McCoy, 41, allegedly attempted
to obtain $100 for each installation of a home
security system from an ADT dealership in Des Moines,
according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The motion-sensor
system, called QuietCare, is placed in senior citizens'
homes to keep track of their safety. According to the
indictment, McCoy collected about $2,000 from the
company between Dec. 29, 2005, and March 24, 2006.
A clear target
McCoy, who was
outed on the senate floor in 2003 by ultraconservative
Republican Senator Ken Veenstra, has been reelected several
times since first winning his state House seat in
1992. Veenstra lost his bid for reelection in 2004
after outing his colleague, as did several other
antigay Iowa officials.
“Since
coming out as an openly gay man,” McCoy said,
“I have been a continuous target of groups
targeting gays to advance their own agendas of
intolerance and hate. Clearly, there is significant
speculation about what has motivated federal officials
to take this action against me.”
The senator says
that U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker, an admitted
conservative, targeted him to show his conservative loyalty
to the Bush administration in the wake of the U.S.
Attorney firings by the Department of Justice. McCoy
is an outspoken advocate for gay rights issues,
including an efforts to defeat a proposed gay marriage ban
as well as to confirm an openly gay man to the
state’s Board of Education and also to ensure a
$400,000 allocation to provide drugs for AIDS patients.
McCoy has successfully pushed an anti-bullying law in
public schools and antidiscrimination laws for LGBT
people in housing and the workplace.
Local observer
David Yepsen noted the unique circumstances of the case.
“[T]he indictment was unprecedented and is full of
political wrinkles,” he wrote in a March 15
Des Moines Register column.
“Old-timers at the Statehouse say that although
legislators have been charged with state misdemeanors,
they can't recall a sitting legislator being indicted
by the federal government.”
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