2nd District (OH) Race: The McEwen Connections, Part 3–
The Financial Non-Disclosure Gambit

Part 1: Advantage Associates
Part 2: Jefferson Consulting and the 12-Year Gap
Part 3: THIS POST
Part 4: Those “Self-Employed” Contributors
Part 5: The Amway-Quixtar (AQ) Business
Part 6: The McEwens and Amway-Quixtar (AQ)
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Y’know, I don’t why I’m surprised or angry. We should all be at the point where we simply understand that playing around with the technicalities of the law for unwarranted political advantage (faux incumbency on paper and over the air, for starters) is just another day’s work for the McEwen campaign.

But Saturday’s Enquirer has a story from its (well, actually Gannett’s) Washington bureau about McEwen’s time inside the Beltway that really does take the cake when it reveals McEwen’s financial non-disclosure strategy for the primary (seventh and eighth paragraphs):

A financial-disclosure report showing how much McEwen makes from being a lobbyist, selling motivational recordings and giving speeches wasn’t immediately available.

The report isn’t due to the U.S. House clerk until 30 days after McEwen declared his candidacy. McEwen filed a statement of candidacy May 16.

Read that again. McEwen does not have to file his financial-disclosure report until June 15, the day after the primary! And, the article notes, four days before the election (when the article was written), he hasn’t done it yet.

And please don’t tell me that Bob wasn’t actively campaigning before May 16:

• BizzyBlog’s very first entry on McEwen carried this quote from a red-state.com column that ties to an Enquirer article from April 15. Here’s about half of the Enquirer piece (bold is mine):
  

  The field of Republicans seeking to replace U.S. Rep. Rob Portman continued to balloon Thursday, with state Rep. Tom Brinkman officially declaring his candidacy and a former congressman who failed to win the seat 12 years ago saying he will try it again.

  The field of declared Republican candidates is now at six for a 2nd Congressional District seat that won’t become officially vacant until Portman is confirmed as President Bush’s new trade representative.

  The White House sent the formal notice of Portman’s nomination to the Senate on Thursday; and a confirmation hearing will be held before the Senate Finance Committee next Thursday.

  Former U.S. Rep. Bob McEwen, 55, a Hillsboro Republican who has spent most of his time in the Washington area since leaving Congress 12 years ago, said he recently bought a condominium in Anderson Township and will file papers with the Federal Election Commission creating a campaign committee.

  “I would much prefer waiting until the seat becomes open, but it has become apparent that that is no longer an option,” McEwen said, referring to the growing list of contenders.

  This won’t be the first time McEwen has moved into the 2nd Congressional District in a bid to win the House seat. In 1993, McEwen ran against Portman.

  McEwen had spent 12 years representing the old 6th District. When congressional districts were redrawn in 1990, McEwen’s district was combined with the southeast Ohio district of then-Rep. Clarence Miller, R-Athens. Miller defeated McEwen in the GOP primary.

  When Willis Gradison’s seat opened up, McEwen bought a house in Bethel in Clermont County and declared his candidacy. He ended up losing the primary to Portman, who went on to win the seat.

  Both McEwen and Brinkman had been expected to announce their candidacies.
  

• The McEwen web site’s LAST blog entry was May 18 (as OH 2nd blog has noted in his “McEwen Blog Death Watch); there were at least a few entires before that going back at least as far as May 11. (How convenient–The McEwen blog is down as of 10AM on June 11–” The blog system is currently down for maintenance to improve the service. Thank you for your patience - please check back again soon.”–any bets on whether it will reappear before the election?) Oops, the blog is back up, and its first entry was on April 11.
• A networksolutions.com WhoIs lookup reveals that the Bobmcewenforcongress.com web site was created on April 4.
• John Willkie’s and Brad Mattes’s joint endorsement letter was faxed in on May 5 (see bottom left of document).
• After a 2-3 day lag, on or about May 19 I returned a phone call from a McEwen supporter, who asked me to support and perhaps work for McEwen (believe me, that didn’t get far). I’m sure my name was nowhere near the top of the list of people the campaign was calling.

McEwen’s delayed “official” candidacy declaration and accompanying postponement of the the financial-disclosure report deadline is at the very minimum an attempt to keep normally required and normally expected information from the voters on Tuesday, and a clever but deceptive way of taking advantage of the compressed primary time frame. There’s not time to investigate whether it’s more than that; if anybody has a tip on the tactic’s legality or lack thereof, e-mail me.

BizzyBlog didn’t really want to have to do this, but someone has to at least partially fill in the financial information void deliberately created by McEwen and his campaign. More on that in later posts, starting here (yeah, I know, I’m running out of time).

Perhaps Bob doesn’t want to bother completing the disclosure forms if he loses. As voters, I would suggest that we help him avoid the hassle.
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UPDATE: To be fair, if anyone is aware of any other candidate not making his/her financial-disclosure report available, e-mail me.

UPDATE 2: Good thing I didn’t bet on the McEwen blog (which is why you’ll almost never see me at a racetrack or casino). It’s up again, but its latest and only additional entry since May 18 is dated June 1st, even though, as noted above, the Ohio 2nd Blog stated on June 9 that the blog had gone 23 days without an entry. I can also personally attest that there was no June 1 entry a few days ago. Zheesh. More importantly, we can now tell you that the McEwen blog’s official first entry was on April 11. And the the entry said he’s “running” (their quote marks).