And so it begins… the round of newspaper stories saying “my congressman is too as corrupt as your congressman.” First up, the Bennington Banner finds U.S. Representative Bernie Sanders, DEIN-Vt., having a bit of a DeLay problem of his own:

Rep. Bernard Sanders used campaign donations to pay his wife and stepdaughter more than $150,000 for campaign-related work since 2000, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Jane O’Meara Sanders, his wife, received $91,020 between 2002 and 2004 for “consultation” and for negotiating the purchase of television and radio time-slots for Sanders’ advertisements, according to records and interviews.

Approximately $61,000 of that was “pass through” money that was used to pay media outlets for advertising time, Jane O’Meara Sanders said in an interview. The rest, about $30,000, she kept as payment for her services, she said.

Carina Driscoll, daughter to Jane O’Meara Sanders and stepdaughter to the lawmaker, earned $65,002 in “wages” between 2000 and 2004, campaign records show.

Frankly, I think the whole “family consulting” thing is a non-story, but if the Good Government types want to get their undies in a bunch about politicians putting their families on the campaign payroll, let’s have everyone’s cards on the table. (þ: Jeff Goldstein)

James Joyner has been pulling together various articles detailing which of our elected representatives have relatives on the campaign payroll. Suffice it to say that Sanders and DeLay aren’t the only ones…

Previous discussion here.