Ball makes the "society pages"

The Washington Post has been digging up some dirt on Greg Ball, the freshman New York Assemblyman from Carmel. In a story today, the paper links Ball's annual Courage Cup polo match, which raises money for a charity, to a political action committee that later contributed to Ball's Assembly campaign.

Ball called the story a "hit piece" prompted by his ongoing battle with an ex-girlfriend over control of the Courage Cup. After all, the story ran in the Post's Style section – what once might have been called the "the society pages."

The story's placement in the Post makes sense, given that the newspaper's local angles are the Courage Cup and the tiff with the ex-girlfriend.

Back home, where most of his constituents probably have never even heard of the Courage Cup, the question for Ball is whether there was any political funny stuff going on.

Ball insists the answer is no. The Courage Cup earns the money it gives to charity by selling tent space to organizations that then can sell tickets to the event. In 2005, one of those organizations happened to be the political action committee, and he was not involved in the committee at the time, he said.