Comments

1

You are doing the Lord's work.

2

Is there some reason the headline focuses on Jenny Durkan? If, as Eli explains, this is an issue for pretty much every candidate in the prior election, it seems odd to suggest this is an issue for just her campaign.

3

Thank you, Mr Sanders, for the doing the hard work of real journalism. This is how corruption and collusion can be brought to light.

4

@2

"The backstory is a long one, but to make it short: I've now spent more than seven months trying to bring legally-required daylight to the online ads purchased by local campaigns.

Along the way, it became important to me to figure out exactly how much the Durkan campaign spent on Facebook and Google ads in 2017. This should be easy to do. But, as it turned out, it was far from easy to do."

Think this is the answer to your question.

5

Great article. I wasn't bored at all. Thank you for doing this necessary investigative work. I look forward to seeing what else you are able to uncover.

6

Got a paragraph in an all I read is BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH.....WHA WHA WHA WHA WHAAAA

7

The good news is you got the little tie-in of Durkan's campaign being compared to Trump's campaign.

Leftists can make Durkan's win about big money, and not about failed Leftist policies that have rendered political viability a very long shot.

Do I care where the money came from. Yes. Did you even supply one number other than her total campaign take? No.

So what good is this piece? It offers us really nothing to work off. If there are holes in the campaign rules then plug them. It's not like campaigns are going to throw their hands in the air and say "fine, we won't maximize our effectiveness."

Oliver lost, not because she's a strong woman of color that looks white. Oliver lost because her politics is shit.

Kshama is an outlier in that she is the master of spin, and she chose a district where she could get the waning support she needed. Kshama wouldn't win outside of District 3. It's questionable whether she will actually even win District 3 next year.

Same with Moon. Moon didn't lose because she's some guilt ridden rich woman who attempted to pander to the minions beneath her. She lost because simply having money doesn't make you ready to be mayor.

Durkan was the only logical choice of the three. Durkan was the best choice of 3 shitty choices.

8

The only thing anybody cares about in this piece is the dig you got in comparing Durkan to a Trump. And then only because it made it more annoying. You have my sympathies for the 7 months you’ve wasted when you could have been covering topics that actually matter to the voting citizens of Seattle. This cause for this pursuit of yours is very much first world white dude problems.

10

@9: Exactly. As interpreted by this commission, the campaign itself must somehow audit all levels of vendors. If they get it wrong — or if a vendor lies to a campaign — who gets punished?

As you said, apply the law to all vendors.

11

@7 Nikkita Oliver didn't make it past the primary. Jessyn Farrell and Bob Hasegawa were two contenders. Sure, Nikkita Oliver was third-place, but if we're going to re-litigate this, might as well talk about everyone who had significant support.

And this isn't about who would be the best mayor, it's about lack of transparency from the current mayor.

12

This is why we need real journalists in this country (and believe me, no one is more shocked than I am that I think a journalist at The Stranger is doing important work). Let's face it, none of us buffoons commenting on this article are going to go to one of these or any of the other very slow, boring, incomprehensible committee meetings in City Hall. We're going to yell and scream and whine and comment about how it's all unfair or the Leftists are iditots or the Right is corrupt, but when it comes down to it, we have someone like Eli to thank for telling us what's really what and giving us the tools to try and get it changed.

Thanks Eli.

13

@11 Oliver, is that you?

It appears the mayor is being fully transparent. It's the sub-sub-venders that are tough to pin down.

14

"Lloyd responded by asking whether he could "negotiate a fine" instead of filing a new disclosure report. It seemed his calculation was that a fine would be less expensive than the cost of his time in doing the new work."

Yes, a fine might be less expensive than the cost of doing the new work, but think deeper: the real reason he'd rather pay the fine and not do the work is becasue the work would reveal the exact details of the money trail - a trail they will likely follow again in 2020.

I'll bet Lloyd would be willing to pay a fine that far exceeds the cost of doing the extra work it it means not having to reveal exactly how they funnel their money. That's just the cost of donig business.

This is exactly why so many campaigns violate campaign finance disclosure laws so often:

1) if they get caught, it's usually not until after the election - so there's no political cost to pay by breaking the rules.

2) if/when they get caught, they usually pay a token fine that's nothing measured against the advantage gained during the election.

It's good to know the Commission is willing to take a firm stand on this and not let the criminal pick their own punishment - though I'd prefer he have to pay a fine AND comply with the law. Otherwise there's no real deterrant.

15

@14: He’d rather pay the fine because it ends the inquiry. If he pays the fine, he doesn’t have to audit all of the vendors, sub-vendors, sub-sub-vendors, consultants to vendors, contractors to sub-vendors, and god-knows-who-else got every last trickle-down from every last dollar which the campaign spent — all with the risk of his having to start all over again if the commission rejects his results.

Again, the way to fix this is to require every level of vendor, consultant, and contractor to follow our disclosure laws.

16

Whattya mean "get your mind out of the gutter"? When I read "Jenny Durkan's subs", I just thought she liked her some Quizno's.

17

7: You're just mad because Zombie Frank Rizzo wasn't on the ballot.

19

18 Do you really think that we believe that a person named "Clara Andrew" would have such obviously Nigerian-Prince broken syntax? You are barely literate in American English. Not to mention that you claim to have gotten pregnant and given birth during the period covered by "this man has just brought back my lost Ex husband to me".

Lying scum; go play in the jungle. .

20

What i'm curious is how do they define the lowest level that needs to be reported? Just requiring vendors and sub-vendors to report isn't going to ever cut it. If you're willing to take the time you can make as many subs as you'd like.

The standard has to be something about the transaction, otherwise we get into either requiring every sub to report (in which case we get the subcontractors to the company that generated Google's power in Norway, if for some reason someone in Europe searches Google for "Seattle Mayor" during the Seattle election season, and Google serves the ad out of their Norwegian data center and not one of their US data centers.

Did the commission broach this in some way? Such as: sub contractors whose supplies are purchased at listed rates available to the general public don't have to report. Either that or you get Office Depot needing to report because the campaign bought some office supplies there...

21

@16 me too. Get your mind off your lunch break and back to work!

22

Your efforts are appreciated, Eli. Thank you for advocating for transparency.


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