Oregonian Rips Me Off (As Usual)

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Today’s headline in The Oregonian was unsurprising. After all, Kevin Mannix is addicted to running for office, no matter how many times he loses, no matter how many political parties ostracize this transplanted Virginia lawyer. What was surprising was the source of some of the information included in the report.

Mannix pays old campaign debts as he launches new campaign
Republican Kevin Mannix settles $347,000 in campaign debts as he starts his bid for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
JEFF MAPES and DAVE HOGAN
The Oregonian Staff

For years, Republican Kevin Mannix has owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign debts while waging what turned out to be three failed races for statewide office.

Now, just weeks after planning to run for Congress, Mannix has swiftly paid off $347,000 in debts with loans from his Salem law firm.

[...]

Langdon did not disclose where the money came from to pay off the large debt, citing confidentiality between Mannix and his legal clients. Mannix declined to be interviewed about his campaign finances.

One big source of legal work for Mannix has been FreedomWorks, the Washington, D.C.-based group that seeks lower taxes and less government regulation. The group reported paying Mannix $540,000 in legal and consulting fees from 2004 through 2006. The group’s 2007 report has not been filed….

So, how did I find this? There was a sudden rash of traffic to my ORIGINAL articles documenting the FreedomWorks connection.

Here: “Kevin Mannix’s Dirty Little Secret” (March 7, 2008 reprint of my Nov. 12, 2007 investigative piece, Mannix: FreedomWorks?)

and Here: “Kevin Mannix FreedomWorks’ Highest Paid Subcontractor” (March 8, 2007)

In other words: I broke the stories. I did the research. I provided the information (and emailed it to various state media outlets. (But do they acknowledge this? )

Now, having stripped all context out of my original research, The Oregonian — at most — looks up the tax returns, to doublecheck, does a quick tally and smugly takes all the credit. (They didn’t dig up this story.)

But, as usual, they miss the forest for the trees. The fact that the crypto-Koch funded creeps out of Washington, D.C. — who use Oregon as their personal laboratory for Frankenstein legislation and initiatives — have paid Mannix a half million dollars for mystery “consulting” work WHILE he was a Republican candidate for governor and for attorney general … well, that’s not important. Just ripping off the numbers is.

Way to go, you superficial, supercilious dimwits.

This isn’t the first time that the smug, self-anointed pricks at The Oregonian have grabbed all the credit at my expense. Back when they “broke” the Howie Rich story, they interviewed me on the phone for over an hour, and then said that the story had been broken by a couple of “Oregon bloggers” in the article. THEN, the put up a sidebar, linking to my blogsite (Boregasm), and as a reflexive he said/she said, linked the “Initiative is Good” website that had just been put up BY Howie Rich’s employees (probably Heather Wilhelm) a mere week or two earlier and was used to PERSONALLY smear me in that election cycle.

[At the bottom, Betsy Hammond, the reporter who interviewed me on the Howie Rich mess, is listed as contributing to the report. Betsy: do your own goddamned legwork from here on in. Simple professional courtesy seems beyond your admittedly limited grasp.]

It wouldn’t have cost the pricks at the Oregonian a goddamned cent to acknowledge my hard work. It wouldn’t have been any skin off my teeth to name me, or acknowledge whose work they were stealing for freebies.

But no. They’re the self-anointed Gods of Journalism.

Screw them, and screw the serpent they slithered in on.

This isn’t the first run-in I’ve had with the clueless arrogance of The Oregonian.

But I’ve got a new tagline for ‘em, just to prove I’m a nice guy: “The Oregonian: Local news in the pejorative sense.“

credit: ipped off from creepy rightie site Dead Fish Wrapper.com

Hell yes I’m mad.

Courage.

==================

UPDATE: On Sunday, March 23, 2008, The (Portland) Oregonian ran this editorial (I’m not linking because it will rapidly disappear and leave the link dead):

With Mannix, it’s hard to follow the money
The perennial candidate, now running for the U.S. House,
Sunday, March 23, 2008

No one, so far, has accused Kevin Mannix of doing anything unethical or illegal, but it isn’t premature to question the political wisdom of his latest fast and loose handling of campaign financing.

The veteran Oregon politician, now running for Congress as a Republican, has handed his opponents a juicy issue for the upcoming primary campaign. He did it by abruptly paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars in long-standing campaign debts with loans from his Salem law firm.

Where did the money come from? Mannix declines to say, citing client confidentiality.

His move may be legal, but it is neither aboveboard nor wise. His chief opponent in the May primary, Mike Erickson, a self-financed Lake Oswego businessman, has already signaled he may make an issue of the way Mannix operates.

Here’s what’s known:

In three failed races for statewide office, Mannix ran up more than $300,000 in campaign debts. They were still on the books in 2006 during his unsuccessful run for governor when one of his primary rivals, Ron Saxton, ran ads slamming Mannix for being in debt.

Apparently, Mannix wanted to avoid the same trap in his latest campaign, seeking the 5th Congressional District seat being vacated by Rep. Darlene Hooley, D-Ore. As The Oregonian’s Jeff Mapes put it this week, Mannix probably imagined one of his opponents running TV spots “asking how he expected to clean up the federal budget when he can’t do the same to his own finances.”

So he cleaned them up just days ago, quickly paying off $347,000 in debts with those murky loans from his solo law practice. His campaign manager told The Oregonian that Mannix was able to settle up with his creditors by “calling in the accounts receivables.”

And just who are those accounts? Mannix won’t say.

It’s just speculation, but those accounts may include FreedomWorks, the Washington, D.C.-based outfit that seeks lower taxes and less government regulation. From 2004 through 2006, the group reported paying Mannix more than a half-million dollars in legal and consulting fees.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. Nothing, that is, if the money was truly compensation for legal work as opposed to campaign contributions masquerading as attorney fees. But even if the fees were entirely legitimate, doesn’t the candidate owe Oregon voters an unlaundered accounting of who’s bankrolling his campaign?

That’s the problem with the way Mannix has mixed his political and business finances. It creates an opaqueness that seems aimed at disguising sources of his political support.

That happened during the 2002 governor’s race. Just eight days before the voting ended that year, Mannix took a $125,000 check made out to the Oregon Republican Party and walked it into the state GOP offices, where he turned it in, asked for a party contribution and waited there for a $125,000 check made out to his campaign — a move apparently aimed at disguising Mannix’s close ties to Loren Parks, the controversial businessman who wrote the original $125,000 check.

Mannix is an exceedingly bright man, but as one who aspires to high office, he may be too bright for his own good.

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