Dine and Dash for Our Leader

The number-two-rated Bush/Cheney 2004 volunteer, Armando Cortinez, found a great way to meet his fundraising goals at a hoity-toity nightclub last week--he ran out the door when the club's manager brought him the bill.

Here's the story from the Frenchie newspaper, the Washington Blade (via On Second Thought):

Managers and employees of the trendy D.C. nightspot Helix lounge, are feeling a hangover from a Bush-Cheney campaign party held there on July 15, after its gay hosts reportedly walked out on their tab. The “Party for the President” — a grassroots initiative of the Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign to raise money and enlist supporters — held by Armando Cortinez and his partner, Tom Duschney, drew only about 15 patrons. But the number still qualified partygoers to participate in a nationwide conference call with First Lady Laura Bush for which Cortinez reserved a conference room. After sipping $7 Bushtinis in the front bar adorned with Bush -Cheney signs, partygoers adjourned to the room to listen to the First Lady. As the event concluded, manager Kobie Ali said, the staff presented the couple with a $205 bill. Duschney and Cortinez disappeared after they told Ali they needed to get their checkbook, he claimed. “I was floored. I couldn’t believe it,” Ali said. “Then, when I tried to run the credit card they had used for deposit, it was declined.”