Candidates denounce late tactics

If Sir Walter Scott were a political reporter today, he might have said it thusly: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when PAC money is found up our sleeve.”

It is so tangled in fact that several candidates called a press conference Wednesday in Kalispell to denounce what they called unfair political practices, and phone calls and e-mails were flying with various accusations as Election Day approaches.

Republicans Derek Skees and Steve Lavin said at the press conference that a new political action committee called the Democratic Legislators Alumni Association was giving money to other PACs that were engaging in what they called questionable practices.

A campaign flyer promoting House District 8 independent candidate Bill Jones as the only “100 percent pro-life” candidate in the race is the source of a lot of the confusion. Jones, formerly a Republican legislator, is running against Lavin and Democrat Bryan Schutt for the open seat..

The political action committee that funded the flyer, the Bozeman-based Values Energy & Growth PAC, received $15,000 from the Democratic Legislators Alumni Association, which was in turn funded entirely by the Montana Democratic Party. The information is included in the political action committees’ financial reports.

In fact, both Jones and Lavin are anti-abortion.

The flyer appears to be an attempt to split the conservative vote and elect Schutt, the Democratic candidate. The district has elected representatives by close margins going back at least a decade.

On Wednesday, Schutt said he had nothing to do with the ad. “I wouldn’t have sent it out,” he said. Schutt said he doesn’t like negative campaigning and sees it as “another symptom of the political process.”

Lavin said Jones called him and said he was disgusted by the ad.

Jones told the Inter Lake, “People should ignore all this PAC material, political mail drops, and third-party comments during the last week when they can’t be responded to,” and said he may be filing a complaint with the state Commissioner on Political Practices over an unrelated campaign tactic used against him.

The flyer sent out by the apparent Democratic ally, the Values Energy & Growth PAC, also calls Jones “a real conservative” and said “Republican doesn’t always mean conservative” in an apparent move to siphon votes away from Lavin.

Lavin said he considers Jones to be a fiscal liberal and a social conservative. Jones has previously said he is fiscally conservative, but supports children’s education and health-care requirements that are mandated by the state Constitution.

Also at Wednesday’s press conference, House District 4 Republican candidate Derek Skees complained about funding for an advertisement that ran in the Flathead Beacon that tried to portray Skees as an extremist.

Skees said he will file a complaint over the ad before Tuesday’s election.

Among the issues raised in the ad, which included a picture of Adolf Hitler, was that Skees had attended a rally at the University of Montana where Red Beckman allegedly spoke. The ad called Beckman a notorious “anti-Semite.”

But Skees told the Whitefish Pilot he had never heard of Beckman before and that he went to the Liberty Convention May 21-22 to hear Kitty Werthman, a Holocaust survivor from Austria; former Graham County, Ariz., Sheriff Richard Mack; and 2008 Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin.

Skees said he is particularly offended by the advertisement because his grandmother is Jewish.

The North Valley PAC, which is based in Whitefish, paid for the ad. According to the political committee’s finance report, its sole funding of $9,000 again came from the Democratic Legislators Alumni Association.

According to the Pilot, House District 4 Democratic candidate Will Hammerquist acknowledged that the North Valley PAC’s officers are his supporters, but said he “doesn’t support or endorse these types of ads.”

There is nothing illegal about the funding link between the Montana Democratic Party and the political action committees, but Lavin and Skees believe it is important for the public to be aware of it.

The chairman of the Flathead County Republican Party, state Sen. Verdell Jackson, agreed with that assessment and said of the pro-Jones ad in House District 8 that “It’s deceptive.”

Jackson said that the “Democratic Party hid behind the PAC in order to promote an independent candidate. What they did is legal, but it’s dishonest. It shows disrespect for the voters... Their purpose and intent was to deceive the voter.”

Jackson stressed that the local GOP campaigns have been straightforward, sticking to issues in traditional advertising and with no links to PACs.

“We aren’t doing any of this,” he said, referring to working through PACs. “We haven’t and we won’t.”

Rep. Mike Jopek, the Democratic incumbent in House District 4, complained in an e-mail to the Inter Lake late Wednesday about a mailer sent out against Hammerquist by the Better Government PAC of Kalispell. There were several people associated with the PAC that had connections to the Republican Party, but Jopek made no allegation of wrongdoing.