The Kansas Second Congressional District race just started to get a little more interesting. And a whole lot more snarky.
BoydaBloc has posted a great video that captures the recent excitement.
So... what happened was that State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins (CPA) has been getting some extra dough to promote her program that helps parents begin saving money for their kids to go to college. Its a state sponsored college savings plan. She's state treasurer.
The ad is paid for by American Century Investments. According to a KTKA report, they spent nearly $429,000 on putting this ad all over the place.
Former Congressman Jim Ryun is raising questions about the ethical nature of the commercial since it features her in the article.
His campaign manager has said
"The American Century ads appear to be a great way to butter up someone who continues to have direct oversight of a contract that generates $3.5 million of profits each year for their firm."
I agree. (how weird is that?)
Yesterday afternoon, the Lynn Jenkins (CPA) Campaign sent out a quick email telling friends and fans about the predicament and ask them for support.
"Jim Ryun is running a character assassination smear campaign against Lynn Jenkins and he is launching ridiculous claims against Lynn targeting her as "unethical". Ethics and Ryun's business dealings with convicted felon Jack Abramoff was, of course, a major issue for Jim when he lost to Nancy Boyda in 2006, so he's trying a trick out of Hillary Clinton's playbook and trying to drag Lynn down with him. Well, it didn't work for Hillary Clinton and it won't work for Jim Ryun either! We need your help to stop him now!
KTKA TV in Topeka is conducting a poll regarding this story and we need you to support Lynn by voting "NO, its her duty to promote the program". Forward this to all your friends and vote here tonight!"
Once reporters got a hold of the email it was quick to appear on the evening news.
Jim Ryun's campaign manager weighed in again:
"Lynn Jenkins got caught red-handed taking unethical donations and now she's trying to skew poll results to cover up her actions. Her campaign should be ashamed."
The piece goes on to quote Jenkins's campaign manger who says that the email only went out to 74 people but it "spread from there." He went further to say that if they wanted to they could have sent it out to thousands of people that they have addresses for but they just sent it out to their supporters....
This is questionable. Why send it out to only 74 of their supporters and ignore the other thousand? Are the other thousand emails they have not supporters? My guess is that they are either lying or they're stupid. Or perhaps they are lying about the number of emails they have. Maybe they only have 74 supporters.
Last night the Kansas City Star posted a piece in which Lynn Jenkins (CPA) was quoted saying
"First allow me to address the implication that my vote is for sale. It has never been and never will be. William Lyons, formerly with American Century, did contribute to my state treasurer re-election campaign in 2006. But it’s wrong and absurd to imply the $1.6 billion contract was awarded to the company, at my direction, for two $250 contributions."
Riiiiiight....
Either way - the most comical thing about this whole ordeal, that the video above deals with, is that former Representative Jim Ryun is the one pointing all of this out.
The very same Jim Ryun who got caught buying a house that was low priced because Tom DeLay and his cronies needed to unload it quickly. The SAME Jim Ryun that said over and over again that he didn't know Mark Foley, but come to find out ... they hosted a fundraiser together because the two lived across the street from each other.
The video is great. Makes me want to say "Hello Pot... this is Kettle..." and definitely makes me love that smile on Tom DeLay's face a little more.
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