10:12 PM EST on Friday, March 10, 2006

By TIM WHITMIRE
Associated Press Writer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — More than six months late, the campaign of Democratic congressional hopeful Heath Shuler has filed a financial disclosure statement for the former NFL quarterback-turned-politician.

"We mailed it Monday," campaign spokesman Andrew Whalen said Friday when asked about the tardy filing.

U.S. House rules require that candidates for the House file a financial disclosure statement within 30 days of becoming a candidate. Shuler filed a statement of his candidacy for the seat now held by veteran GOP Rep. Charles Taylor last July 14, making the financial statement due by Aug. 13.

"We've not denied that we were late in sending this in," Whalen said. "It's a complicated form. We wanted to make sure it was 100 percent accurate and correct. That's why it was late getting in."

Whalen said the campaign has paid a $200 fine for filing the paperwork late and noted that the campaign changed managers at the start of the year.

Shuler, a native of Bryson City and a former star quarterback at the University of Tennessee, had an injury-shortened career as an NFL quarterback with the Washington Redskins and New Orleans Saints.

Republicans tried to recruit him to run for office in Tennessee before he moved home last year and said he would challenge eight-term congressman Taylor, who is in his eighth term representing a district that encompasses the liberal enclave of Asheville and the conservative mountain counties of far western North Carolina.

Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, wasn't buying the Shuler campaign's explanation for the late filing.

"Heath Shuler chose to make ethics a centerpiece of his campaign, yet he grossly violated the one House ethics rule that applies to candidates like himself," Collegio said, referring to a recent Shuler pledge to support ethics and lobbying reform if elected. "When a candidate turns in their forms over 200 days late, that person is acting as though the rules of Congress don't apply to him or her.

"So far, Shuler is 0 for 1 on ethics."

Whalen called it "laughable" for Republicans to criticize Shuler when Taylor "has been implicated by colleagues in a banking scandal and has admitted to taking money from Jack Abramoff and refused to return that money. We know how dirty that money was."

Taylor has said he does not intend to return nearly $3,000 he received from Abramoff and Abramoff's wife. Abramoff has pleaded guilty in a fraud and bribery conspiracy case and is cooperating with the investigation into those in Congress and the administration he used to lobby.

Whalen's mention of a "banking scandal" refers to a 2003 criminal trial at which two longtime Taylor political associates, Charles "Chig" Cagle and Hayes Martin, testified Taylor knew of fraudulent loans made to Cagle by the Asheville-based bank Taylor chairs, Blue Ridge Savings.

Taylor has denied any knowledge of the loans.

Shuler's nine-page disclosure statement pegs the value of Shuler's stakes in a Knoxville, Tenn., shopping center, a Del Rio, Tenn.-based real estate development company, and another company, Blackberry Cove, at between $1 million and $5 million each.

The statement also says Shuler has between $500,000 and $1 million in a checking account at a Knoxville bank, a family trust and Waynesville-based Shuler Properties, a real estate company.

The lengthy document also lists scores of individual stock holdings, none of which is valued at greater than $50,000.

Taylor filed his most recent financial disclosure statement last May, as is required annually of all House members.

The banker and timber magnate is among Congress's wealthiest members and his 2005 statement lists more than $50 million in stock in Asheville-based Financial Guaranty Corp., a Taylor-owned holding corporation, and between $1 million and $5 million in savings accounts at Blue Ridge Savings; a land and timber partnership in Haywood County; and shares of the Russia-based Bank of Ivanovo.