Jenkins' American Century Problem Just Not Going Away

Poor Lynn Jenkins. It seems as the stories about her unethical participation in TV ads paid for by a company whose lobbyist and CEO gave her money right before she gave them a big ol' state contract just aren't drifting into the ether like she so hoped they would.

We've done our part, of course. We've already post about it here and here. Also, here and here.

The Kansas Democratic Party is in the game, now, too- they issued a press release on April 1 criticizing Jenkins for not being up front about the whole thing with the people of Kansas.

While defending her appearance in mailers and ads for American Century before two different elections, Jenkins wrote in the Kansas City Star that “Research conducted by American Century found that [her] presence in the ads…bring credibility, attention and reassurance to Kansans” and that she would have been “knowingly doing a disservice to the program and to the people of Kansas” had she not participated. Yet, Jenkins has not produced any such research to verify these statements.

Well, she did produced "research" to "verify" her statements. Her office managed to find one slide from one PowerPoint presentation that says "she makes the ads better!" without any statistics or any references to back it up. And the quote from the silly slide isn't even very good:

"They see it's from Lynn Jenkins and it's professionally done and that impresses people and carries a lot of weight."

That's a three conjunction monster-of-a stupid quote.

So, we're just supposed to take Lynn Jenkins and American Century Investments at their word that it's all on the up-and-up and that her gleaming grin is just necessary for the ads to be successful at all.

No one's buying it, Lynn.

“If there is any disservice, it is for Lynn Jenkins to engage in this kind of questionable behavior so close to an election and only now attempt to defend these actions with false claims. Kansans deserve a straight answer from Lynn Jenkins about her participation in these ads and a promise that she will not continue what would be a flagrant violation of federal ethics rules in this race,” said Kansas Democratic Party Executive Director Mike Gaughan.

In the end, this isn't about whether or not Jenkins is lying out of her behind when she talks about how "research proves" it is very, very, very necessary it is for her to appear in those ads, this is about Lynn Jenkins not having the moral clarity to do what's right- and what's right is for her to say "Thanks, but no thanks," to American Century Investments if they choose to run ads featuring her smiling face again while she's still a candidate for Congress. Not just because it's the morally correct thing for her to do, but because anything else would have her coming awfully close to violating election law.

Today, we're happy to join with the Kansas Democratic Party in there call:

One PowerPoint slide doesn’t seem adequate to justify her presence in these ads if we’re talking about a future potential FEC violation. We’re calling on Lynn Jenkins to promise she won’t appear in American Century ads during both the FEC primary window and general election window.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) regulations define an electioneering communication as: “Any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication that (1) refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office; (2) is publicly distributed within 60 days before a general election or 30 days before a primary election for the office sought by the candidate referenced in the communication; and (3) in the case of a Congressional candidate, is targeted to the relevant electorate.”

Sorry, Lynn...you're the one with a bad ethical compass who decided to run for Congress. 'Course, as we've pointed out before, this doesn't make you any different than former Congressman Jim Ryun...peas in the same corrupt pod.