Live by the PDC complaint, die by the PDC complaint, that’s the painful lesson the Susan Hutchison campaign ironically learned yesterday after a press conference was derailed by questions regarding alleged reporting violations.
PDC complaints are a dime a dozen during election season, a standard campaign tactic intended to discredit the opposition and distract the press. Our disclosure requirements are complicated and time consuming, and mistakes are made, unintentional or not, and thus there’s rarely a top of the ticket campaign that hasn’t had a PDC complaint filed against it, and/or had a PDC complaint filed on its behalf. Hell, even I’ve filed a PDC complaint or two… that’s how common they are.
In that spirit, Hutchison and her surrogates have been pushing a complaint against the Constantine campaign for weeks, accusing it of illegal coordination with an independent expenditure campaign with which it shares treasurers, Jason Bennett. Illegal coordination is a pretty damn serious charge, but like many such complaints, this one is also pretty damn unsupported by the facts. Bennett serves as treasurer for dozens of campaigns, a role that largely consists of, well, filing PDC reports. In fact, it was Bennett himself who first notified the PDC of the potential conflict after he saw the IE come through from his other client.
And that’s the kind of thorough attention to detail Hutchison could’ve used from her own campaign treasurer, judging by the 81 reporting violations contained within the PDC complaint filed yesterday by the King County Democrats. To be fair, individually, the bulk of the violations are of the piddling variety, normally attributable to sloppiness and incompetence, though taken together they sure do come off as a general disregard for our public disclosure laws. Chronically late reports… missing employer information and sub-vender detail… these are the kinda things the PDC tends to try to work with campaigns to resolve, though given the extent of the violations, I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least a minor fine come down, if many months after the election. Or maybe not. The PDC can be inscrutable this way.
But buried amidst all the apparent sloppiness are a couple of doozies Hutchison will find much harder to explain… as she did at yesterday’s press conference, when she first refused to answer reporters’ questions regarding the four bedroom Laurelhurst house she uses as a campaign headquarters, but doesn’t report as either a contribution or an expense, before proceeding to dig herself even deeper by spinning an obvious fib.
Finally, Hutchison told [KIRO-TV reporter Essex] Porter the home was “not donated” and that it was “the residence of my campaign manager.”
[Jordan] McCarren, who works for a California-based Republican consulting firm, is not from Seattle.
McCarren tells PubliCola that he rents the property. “I have a rental agreement with the landlord.” However, asked who the landlord is, he says, “Honestly, I would have to look that up.”
You don’t know who you pay rent to? “We have offered all that information to the PDC.”
As Publicola uncovered, the rental home is managed by a company owned by wireless mogul and Republican moneybags Bruce McCaw, who has already double-maxed to Hutchison to the tune of $1,600 in contributions. And as for the claim that McCarren pays the rent, well, that’s hard to believe, at least not at fair market value.
Numerous searches of Craigslist and various rental services have shown similar houses in the neighborhood renting for between $2,300 and $4,000 month. That’s a pretty typical range for an $800,000 home, and far beyond the reach of a campaign manager in a county executive race.
As noted, Hutchison’s expenditure reports are a bit of a mess, but the only reported expense that appears to match his position is a $4,500/month recurring “communications consultant” fee, of which McCarren’s employer, Dresner Wicker, certainly takes a piece. So it begs credulity that McCarren would blow the bulk of his after-tax salary renting a four bedroom house in Laurelhurst for six months. Clearly, either McCaw’s company is renting Hutchison’s campaign headquarters to McCarren at well below market rates, which constitutes an illegal and unreported campaign contribution, or the rent is being illegally subsidized in some other fashion. And even if McCarren was paying market rent out of his own pocket, Hutchison still couldn’t use it as campaign headquarters without reporting it in some manner.
(And there’s no doubt the house is her campaign headquarters; that’s how it’s identified in her KCTS profile, and that’s what the campaign calls it in their own email.)
But whoever is paying the rent, it’s a pretty damn serious charge — amounting to as much as $20,000 in illegal contributions — and a damn sight better supported than the merely speculative complaint lodged against Constantine and Bennett. Combine that with the other $20,000 in late primary expenditures the complaint alleges the campaign also failed to disclose, and Hutchison has some serious ‘splainin’ to do.
The irony is, if the Hutchison camp hadn’t so emphatically pushed their complaint against Constantine, our fair and balanced media might not have felt quite so empowered to aggressively question Hutchison about her own alleged reporting violations. “Let she who is without sin cast the first stone” and all that… now that’s a Biblical verse Hutchison should be familiar with.
But more than just ignoring a Bible lesson, Hutchison also failed to learn from a Nixonian one: it’s the coverup, stupid.
I don’t doubt that McCarren may sleep there, but it’s “the residence of my campaign manager” does not answer the question as to why she didn’t report the use of the house as either a donation or an expense. She could have just said “Oops, my bad,” and promised to work with the PDC to clear up any discrepancies; a final determination on the complaint, and any accompanying fines wouldn’t come until months after the election, so little harm done.
But for a candidate who has made transparency a central theme of her campaign, her transparent lie yesterday didn’t do much to shore up her own credibility.
In the photos, people looked comfortable in the Laurelhurt house, as if the furnace was on. I resent that.
It’s pretty discouraging that modern campaigning comes down to this kind of gamesmanship. For all its headline appeal, this just isn’t an issue that voters care about, and it has little or no appeal to people who care about the substantive policy issues facing county government. But what’s even more discouraging is that candidates like Hutchison yield to the temptation to use airless allegations as campaign fodder because there are so many flighty voters who don’t know the difference between accusation and guilt. Is it any wonder we get stuck with gadflies like Suzie while serious-minded potential leaders avoid the profession of politics like the plague?
I can imagine the conversation which took place between Hutchinson and her staffers when this first arose as an issue. “Are we really supposed to report something like this? I mean, it’s not like we received cash or anything! Am I supposed to report it everytime somebody gives me a ride in their car????”
Which might be forgivable questions coming from a novice in politics who is running for a council seat of a small suburb, or a school district, or something of the sort.
But since Hutchinson wants to run the King County Government, which has a population and budget which rivals that of many states (and a few small countries), it shows that she doesn’t yet understand the basic difference between being a public servant and being a private individual.
Sure, the rules are kind of petty from time-to-time, but the rules are there because somebody in the past tried to abuse the system. You have to understand the rules and comply with them, or you have no legitimate reason to be on the government payroll.
It’s like I tell the new people in our company on occassion – we work in a highly regulated industry. No matter how silly we think the rules might be from time-to-time, it’s our job to understand them thoroughly and to comply with them 100%. If it were easy to do and instinctive, then anyone could do the job.
goldy, you need to edit your posts and condense them to a few lines. not too many will read through a 10 paragraph post even if it is “a” level content.
@4 A better alternative is for readers to invest effort in being well-informed. I mean, I’d hate to see a Readers Digest Condensed Books version of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, know what I mean? This particular article of Goldy’s is well organized, coherent, and doesn’t waste verbiage. Oh, maybe a professional editor could tighten it a word or two, here and there, but what’s the point? Why not just read it for the information it contains, and think about the issue it raises, instead of worrying about whether it would deserve an A+ or merely an A in a college composition class? Goldy has done his job; now it’s time for readers to do their job.
# 5: You’ve made a good point.
Ronald Reagan used to insist that his briefing papers be restricted to a single page. That should have been a warning sign that he was easily persuadable by people who could spoon-feed him the “easy answer”, rather than take the time to dig through the details to come to the correct conclusion himself.
There’s plenty of evidence that by the last couple of years of his Presidency he was already suffering from the early stages of dementia.
# 2: Heard a radio campaign regarding the Port District election. I didn’t even hear the names of the candidates, but it was just the type of ad which would make me want to vote against the candidate sponsoring it. The add linked the opposition as being in bed with Acorn “the group made famous for vote fraud”, mad a vague allegations about a warrant for return of unemployment compensation, and then said something about “millions wasted” when it cut off and concluded that the opponant was just too irresponsible to be elected to an important position.
Problem is, the add never really said anything of substance, but accused the opponant of something nefarious anyway. Lots of inuendo, but nothing concrete. It’s the worst kind of election campaign tactics, but there are just enough voters out there who’s only exposure to a low-profile port campaign would come through this add for it to have some effect.
@7 Sounds like BIAW crap.
#7 That’s clearly an “independent expenditure” against Rob Holland, “independently” in support of that scum David Doud.
It figures that they — BIAW or some similarly scurrilous crowd — would try to associate the African-American candidate with ACORN. Not that those types would ever try to gin up something that smacks of racism.
The reference, BTW, is to a pre-primary forum event of some sort that was sponsored by (among others) ACORN. It was attended by just about all of the Port candidates.
Suzie is transparently phony.
i support a 1 post, 5 line limit per day on roger rabbit too. think, write, breathe, edit, then post. this ain’t the library.
@11
Unless he’s making a reference to hugging a rabbit. Those crack me up.
On the subject of Dresner Wicker the political money laundering consultant used by BIAW and Hutchison, Just who’s cash is funding their work and expenses over and above what is reported will never be known until all political consultants doing business in the state of Washington are forced to open their books under our PDC laws.
What’s a petard?
The main purpose of the right’s carpet-bombing of ACORN is obvious: accusation of election fraud as a deflection from their own prior indiscretions, and retaliation for not getting away with it last year.
On the other hand, for an association of homebuilders to participate in the demonization of an organization that works to help people become (and stay) homeowners would seem to have an element of autoerotic foot shooting.
Hutchison’s association with the stealth creationists would seem to have inured her with the all-too-common Republican assumption that telling the same lie over and over again eventually makes it the truth.
14 TT
If only there were some way to look up such things. Perhaps an electronic device, one capable of displaying words, with the additional potential for searching for and retrieving information. If only! Well, maybe some day…
Susie Hutch is about as “transparent” as a stone wall. Hey, stonewall!
In the wingnut mind, they already possess the truth. Anyone who deviates can be lied to and cheated because by helping themselves (the truth holders) they ultimately help everyone!!
Kind of like Mormons.
The rental value of that house looks pretty serious to me. It isn’t just a reporting error, but an illegal contribution. Hutchison can be fined up to three times the amount of an excessive campaign contribution. That could be a hell of a lot of money.
Goldy was wrong about PDC rules. PDC rules are simple. Most campaigns can get it right on the major stuff. The truth is, if you can’t handle the easy rules of the PDC and limited funds of a campaign, how can the public trust a candidate to wade through the complicated RCW and be in charge of millions of dollars?
PDC violations should be of concern by every voter. IT is the LAW.
“…owned by wireless mogul and Republican moneybags Bruce McCaw…”
What is it with cell phone companies? & does McCaw have anything to do with Mallahan?
District 9 much until we saw it and realized how great it was. ,