RE: [Mpls] 3rd ward- a council seat up for auction?

[dyna]

	Michael Guest wrote:

Dyna,

Joe is spending time with friends at the moment. We just saw Gangs of
New York and are discussing the implications. Unfortunately he is unable
to jump to answer your veiled accusations and desperate attempts to find
a diversion to the real issues of the campaign.

Michael, accountability is the major issue in this campaign. We just had our last councilmember convicted of a felony in federal court for taking a smaller amount than Bob Samuels' questionable campaign printing probably cost.

So I asked Joe how the literature portion of the Samuels campaign budget
is constructed. He called up the stairs to me that there were five
pieces mailed to a universe of about 3,000 at an average of .27/piece.
No donations, no free labor; an additional 2 pieces doorknocked; on top
of that were fundraising letters volunteer recruitment letters.

OK, $.27 apiece is close enough to the carrier route presort rate of $.275 to be believable. That still leaves the cost of the printing, which could very well be 27 cents a piece, unexplained. Don Samuels' campaign still hasn't accounted for mailhouse costs either- I have a hard time believing his volunteers licked and sticked 15,000 of those stamps in the last holiday week. The "presorted first class" "diner" stamps Don Samuels' campaign used are available in rolls for mailhouses to machine apply to give the appearance of a small mailing, and are difficult for normal "citizens" such as us to acquire. Mailhouses typically charge about half the presort discount, in this case at most $.095. For Don Samuels' 15,000 piece mailing that comes to about $700 that Don Samuels' campaign still hasn't accounted for. Add in the cost of the fancy cards and envelopes (at least 20 cents apiece) and Don Samuels' campaign has yet to account for more expenses than our last councilman was convicted of receiving as a "donation". And Don Samuels has yet to make it through the primary, never mind actually get into office.

I asked if the campaign had received any major in-kind donations or PAC
funds.  His answer: "No -- and as long as Don is running against the
DFL, Republican and Green party endorsed candidates I don't really
expect we will get any either."

When a candidate receives thousands of dollars worth of unaccounted for campaign "donations" I suspect they don't need a lot of "above the table" donations.

I also asked him why the print shop he used wasn't union and if they
were huge and went to extreme lengths to keep their employees from
forming a union.  His answer?  "No, it is a small family owned, minority
owned business in the third ward doing extremely high tech digital
graphics and printing. Everyone does everything in the shop and it is
not conducive to the union job classifications."  He noted that it never
was a union shop and that the employees are paid comparable or higher
then union wages.

I should hope so, but in todays hi tech meltdown computer graphics professionals are a dime a dozen and some scab employers are taking advantage of that market.

Then he went into the class implications of the movie. . . . but that is
another story.

Another attempt to evade the issue.

So, nice try Dyna but let's get back to the issues.

And a not so nice try by Don Samuels' campaign to avoid the issue of accountability. This issue is a day old now and 3rd ward voters have yet to see Don Samuels account for his campaign finances. If Don Samuels can't tell us where the money for his campaign came from, why should 3rd ward voters trust him with the city's finances?

Michael S Guest
Powderhorn

Nice of all the folks from outside the 3rd to help us pick our next Council Member...

PS: Don is on WCCO radio tonight. He is fantastic!

Nice to get all that free media, will WCCO and the rest be giving the other candidates equal time? We 3rd ward voters need a candidate who can balance the city's and his own finances rather than get media coverage every day.

from Hawthorne in the 3rd ward,

Dyna Sluyter

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