Dow Constantine Named in Complaints to PDC

By Evan at September 30th, 2009.

King County Executive candidate Dow Constantine has been named in a complaint made to the state’s elections and campaign finance watchdog.

A second complaint has also reportedly been made. So, what’s the story?

Don’t turn to the Seattle Times. Our region’s paper of record hasn’t yet weighed in (maybe competition wasn’t such a bad thing, after all?).

A Seattle Weekly reporter, who also had a cover-story last week on Constantine’s bid for the Exec seat, covered the matter in a blog post:

Here’s the gist of the newest wonky political scandal. Dow Constantine’s campaign treasurer Jason Bennett, of local campaign consulting firm Argo Strategies, is also the campaign treasurer for FAIRPAC, reported the Seattle Times in early August. The Democratic political action committee sponsored a primary mailing by Moxie Media giving voters a list of Susan Hutchison’s Republican ties–donations to GOP candidates and the like–and saying she’s a threat to reproductive rights. FAIRPAC also paid $8,200 for anti-Hutchison robocalls before the primary.

Now having the same guy keeping track of several people’s cash and filing reports with the state Public Disclosure Commission is kosher, but if that guy is helping an individual candidate and a PAC work together, that’s a big no no.

SeattlePostGlobe.org, a site that sprung up after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went out of print this year, provides further analysis:

What raised the Hutchison’s campaigns suspicions that FAIRPAC and Constantine were not acting independently was an Aug 5 Seattle Times report that FAIRPAC and the Constantine campaign employ the same treasurer, Jason Bennett.

Mr. Bennett has subsequently claimed to provide only “ministerial” services. But the Hutchison campaign noted that Constantine listed Mr. Bennett as a member of his campaign team in a Seattle Fire Fighters Local 27 questionnaire . Bennett also hosted a July 30th fundraiser for Constantine which he advertised on his consulting firm’s Twitter account.

Hotshot progressive politics site, PubliCola.net, posted the complaint and got a response from the Constantine camp:

Constantine’s campaign spokesman Sandeep Kaushik (who, full disclosure, co-founded PubliCola with me last January) says: “It’s a frivolous complaint, and it will be dismissed. It’s an obvious attempt to insinuate a violation that does not exist.”

Kaushik adds: “Jason Bennett has never come to a campaign meeting nor has he had any involvement in formulating our campaign strategy. His role is to do our [campaign finance] compliance work, filing our forms with the Public Disclosure Commission.”

Bennett is the head of the 36th District Democrats, and according to his political consulting firm’s website, previously worked for Senator Maria Cantwell.

A comment on the Publicola.net site highlights a further connection: the director of the FAIRPAC expenditure, Lisa MacLean Collins (also the owner of Moxie Media), apparently shares an office with Constantine’s campaign consulting firm (Northwest Passage Consulting).

That issue is now also reportedly the subject of a PDC complaint filed against Dow Constantine by a columnist with the Federal Way Mirror.

Our publisher has requested a copy of the second complaint (Publicola.net has already posted the first Dow Constantine PDC complaint). If we receive it from the PDC, we’ll try to post a PDF of it here in an update.

Tags: Argo Strategies, Christian Sinderman, Dow Constantine, featured, Jason Bennett, Lisa MacLean Collins, Moxie Media, Northwest Passage Consulting