About that Bill Halter Campaign Debt; More Fun in the Democratic Senate Primary
The Democratic Primary between Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter continues to go back and forth today on the issue of unions. It started with Lincoln for Senate issuing the following statement on Friday…
“Typically, Bill doesn’t have the courage to attack Senator Lincoln under his own name,” said Steve Patterson, Lincoln for Senate Campaign Manager. “He allows a front group formed a few days ago by national labor unions to do his dirty work. When the ad states that Senator Lincoln is ‘not for us,’ it is true that Senator Lincoln answers to Arkansas, not to the national labor unions.
“Arkansans aren’t going to be fooled. While Bill postures against special interests, he strikes a shady deal with some of the most powerful special interests in Washington who agreed to use workers’ dues to repay his outstanding debt from his last campaign, and carry out his attacks on Senator Lincoln.” (Full release on the jump.)
Halter for Senate fires right back saying that Lincoln was being “untruthful” in her statement.
“Blanche Lincoln is once again not being truthful with Arkansans. Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter nor his campaign had any knowledge of this ad and, in fact, it would have been illegal for our campaign to have had knowledge,” said Bud Jackson, Halter for Senate Campaign Manager. “Lincoln has also once again falsely asserted that a union has retired the lieutenant governor’s previous campaign debt. Public records reflect that this assertion is a lie and that a debt remains. Since Blanche Lincoln feels so strongly that the working men and women of Arkansas should not be allowed to contribute to the political process, we hereby challenge her to return the more than $500,000 in contributions she has taken from unions for over a decade. It is quite telling that she only complains about union money when she is no longer receiving it along with the support of the working men and women they represent. (Full release on the jump.)
Lincoln for Senate responded today to the Halter for Senate response saying who’s lying?
“This isn’t a case of he said, she said,” Patterson said. “The evidence shows that he cut a deal with a national labor union and Bill’s own spokesman acknowledged it.” (Full release on the jump.)
So let me cut through the spin and see what we know. The fact is that the Service Employees International Union PAC made a contribution of $6,000 on December 21, 2009 to help retire $444,189.33 of debt Bill Halter owed for his 2006 lieutenant governor campaign. On the one hand, this was only about 1.3% of his outstanding debt but on the other hand it was as much as they were legally allowed to give. At the time Jon Youngdahl, the director of the SEIU PAC, told the AP this was because of Halter “bright political future.”
Did they help him with his debt to try to get him to run for the U.S. Senate against Lincoln? I think that is a safe assumption. But it was not an amount anywhere close to the nearly half million in total debt Halter owned. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle.