You remember Ira, the suspicious New York investment banker who built a huge vacant cabin out on Halls Hill Pike (an income tax dodging maneuver perhaps?). He ran against Robert Peay Jr. in 2006, spending $30,000 on a county commission race. Robert promptly clobbered him 61%-39%, so he decided to run the Tennessee Republican Party’s 2008 coordinated campaign. Then, he wanted to be Tennessee’s State Treasurer, but the following disastrous interview with Phil Williams of WTVF sealed his fate:
Now he has picked up qualifying papers to run against Congressman Jim Cooper of Nashville. Ira doesn’t live in the district (no one really knows where he lives), but apparently he’s not going to let that stop him. He wants to be added to a heaping pile of winners churned out by the Rutherford County Republican Party like Donna Rowland, Joe Carr, and Bill Ketron. The Nashville Post has the story:
Brody was a partner and chief operating officer in a Nashville-based investment firm called InsCap Management LLC. He resigned from that position while he was attempting to become state treasurer. That business, which has since dissolved, was a source of consternation for many in the GOP.
Brody and InsCap, which in the past has also done business as LILAC Capital LLC, fought hard in several states to bring about changes to laws that would either allow them to enter into a new market or improve their business environment. The tactics they have employed to affect change raised eyebrows in some states.
According to published reports, consumer watchdogs in North Dakota argued in 2007 that North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Jim Poolman changed his stance on rules affecting Brody’s business shortly after Brody’s wife, Sara Bachrach, donated $25,000 to his re-election campaign and Brody donated $15,000 to the North Dakota Republican Party.
In Virginia, Brody and his team employed a cadre of 11 lobbyists in 2005 in a futile effort to stop legislation that further regulated the settlement of life insurance policies.
Despite those setbacks, Brody did have success in Tennessee. In 2004, his company employed nine lobbyists to work to change state law to benefit InsCap.
