Destroying Trust in Government: The Daily News endorses Rivers and Russell.

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Apparently proving the old saw that you can fool at least some of the people, some of the time, the Daily News endorsed Jon Russell for the 18th District seat vacated by Jaime Herrera. Of course, the primary endorsement went to Rivers, but the reasoning for that is self-evident, so I won't go into that here.

Clearly, the Daily News was unaware of Russell's foibles (Checking the evidence on this blog, painstakingly developed and completely unrefuted by Russell) which calls into question his veracity and integrity. It's difficult to believe they are or were unaware of his false claims of a degree, or his almost systematic touting of his wife as a doctor (Now under investigation by the State of Washington), his falsehoods concerning the amount of money he'd raised to the 18th District PCO's and his equally systematic violation of this state's Public Disclosure Laws, violations all detailed on this blog. While they do mention Russell's tenure as a city councilman, they also seem either unaware or unconcerned of his deliberate use of that body as a campaign prop, and the results of his abysmal tenure on the body, which includes the loss of $100,000 in city money while he was chair of the city finance committee, the approval of the former mayors expenses in Vegas; and the former mayor's ability to walk all over Russell, without public complaint from him, which he alleges is the true source of these losses.

While they filled in some space mentioning Russell's endorsements, they left out the long list of those endorsing Rivers, available here: http://electannrivers.com/endorsements

It is personally disappointing to me that the newspaper failed to drill down and take a hard look at Russell.... not only by what he claims to have done, but by what he's actually done... which kind of goes far beyond those issues discussed in an editorial board.
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So, back in May.... why did Jon Russell lie to the PCO's about the money?

Earlier, I smacked Brandon Vick for lying to the PCO's at the District 18 meeting on 22 May about how much money he had raised to that point. He had claimed he'd raised $8100 when records he submitted showed he had raised $6000 in cash and in kinds or so at the time of the meeting... overstating the amount he had by a third or so.

That leads me to Jon Russell. Russell had already told us his wife was a "physician," which is completely untrue. So, the moment he told the PCO's that he had $10,000, I knew he was lying... again. But lacking the proof, you've got to let it go... which I did... until today.

According to the records provided by Russell, who for whatever the reason continues to file manually instead of electronically, Russell had raised $5421 in cash and in-kinds at the end of the last filing period: May 10 for April.

Now, when it comes to cash for this race, Russell shows that he's raised

March - $3125
April - $1496
May - $2031 (+597 from himself)

$6652 (plus, of course, the 597 from himself.)

He has raised, he claims, $9024 in cash and in kinds.

Now, at the time of the meeting when he'd claimed he'd raised $10,000, the record he'd submitted shows that he had raised $1445 or so in addition to what he was showing at the last reporting period: $5421 in cash and in kinds.

So, when he claimed that he had raised this mythical $10,000, he had, in fact, raised closer to $6900 or so... overstating the amount he'd raised to the PCO's by roughly 40% or so.

Why?

His congressional campaign proved beyond any doubt how badly he sucked at raising money; that ability hasn't magically improved. Jon, you suck at raising money.

Why lie about it, especially to your own PCO's?