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.

Lynn Jenkins: A Glass Jaw on the Verge of Shattering

The primary battle between Lynn Jenkins and Jim Ryun has become one of the nastiest in recent memory in Kansas and has become particularly bloody at this point.

However shocking it might be, that has a lot more to do with Lynn Jenkins' inability to counter her opponents with measured, appropriate responses than it does dirty tricks from the Ryun campaign. Nope, from Lynn, it's always full tilt, guns blaring- in the wrong direction.

Yes, every single time she's been confronted with any criticism in this race, Lynn Jenkins has responded instantly, forcefully, and, without fail, wrongly.

Take, for instance, her response to the Club for Growth ad that was run attacking her (rightfully) for being a "proven tax-hiker" when she was in the state legislature.

How did she respond? First, she lied. Then she went all crazy all over Jim Ryun.

“Despite their slimy efforts, no false advertising funded by Jim Ryun’s Washington, D.C., friends will prevent the truth about Treasurer Jenkins’ fiscally conservative record from getting out to the voters of the 2nd District,” said Jenkins’ campaign manager, Pat Leopold.

[Leopold also said this in the press release Jenkins sent out:]

"Treasurer Jenkins was hopeful that Jim Ryun would agree [to run a clean campaign] and find at least one thing in his decade in Congress he was willing to run on instead of turning to the same attacks that got him fired in the first place."

But, Lynn...you did vote to increase taxes over and over again while you were in the legislature. Our fellow blue blog Blue Tide Rising had an excellent analysis of this whole mess at the time:

Lynn Jenkins overreacted. Immediately, she incorrectly accused Jim Ryun of being behind the attack. Because such coordination is prohibited by the FEC this is a serious allegation, she's accusing Jim Ryun of breaking the law. It begs the question, as a candidate is Lynn Jenkins experienced enough to win in a hyper-competitive General election? How many more "Clubbings" before her glass jaw breaks?

Call that "Lynn Flies of the Handle #1."

For "Lynn Flies off the Handle #2," we have a very recent, very public hissy fit that came when this blog and Jim Ryun's campaign, with just a little help from the KC Star, raked her over the coals for, oh, accepting political contributions from the CEO of a company to which she was about to give a multi million dollar state contract.

Illegal? Naw. Unethical? Depends on your point of view. Should she get as far away from the company as she can? You better betcha!

But did she? No, of course not, because they were planning on running TV commercials featuring her smiling face...in the district she's running for Congress in! How convenient!

So, Ryun called her out (as did this blog), and told her to tell the company to not run the ads featuring her gleaming grin as long as she was running for Congress. And how did Ms. Jenkins handle that? You win a shiny new quarter if you said, "She jumped the shark."

Lynn sent out an e-mail broadsiding Ryun for character assassination because he dared to question her ethical standards. In her e-mail, which we love, she returned the favor to Mr. Ryun.

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!

Like we said at the time....she actually compared Jim Ryun to Hillary Clinton, which is the funniest thing anyone has said in Kansas politics since Speaker Melvin Neufeld last talked about carbon dioxide. 'Course, she was right on with the part about Jim Ryun being unethical, too...but we digress.

All comes down to that this is just another episode that paints a pretty clear picture of Lynn Jenkins as a woman who couldn't find a measured political response with the help of a Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencil and an adding machine

(Accountant humor...we thought it was funny...).

By the way, with a jaw as brittle as it appears to be, Jenkins would be wise to not throw stones. She's not wise, of course, and was quoted hurling a big ol' rock in the July 7, 2007 issue of the Wichita Eagle when talking about Jim Ryun's campaign to win his old seat back:

"Most of the comments I've heard is that it smacks of a desperate attempt to regain his DC lifestyle, and Kansans rejected that in November of 2006."

She also lied to her hometown newspaper about where Ryun is currently living.

That's a dangerous game, Lynn. A word of advice, from us straight to you: Don't throw elbows unless you can handle them, too, ma'am.

So, when will Lynn "Glass Jaw" Jenkins finally crack? With only $90,000 raised last quarter and every last bit of momentum going toward her Republican opponent, we can't see that she's got much time left in her increasingly desperate quixotic quest for Congress.

Making Tom DeLay Smile

Our newest "fancy" YouTube vid:

Ryun & Jenkins: Bringing Unethical Leadership Back

We certainly have taken a great deal of glee out of the news reports of Lynn Jenkins and her unethical ties to the company running TV commercials for her all over the district.

We've even said several times that we agree with Jim Ryun and his campaign manager, Kyle Robertson, for calling on Lynn to do the right thing and tell American Century to stop airing the ads.

Lynn's made this all pretty easy, though, for Ryun's campaign and for this blog. We had a commenter say she needed to keep herself from being "Swift Boated," and, yes, while she needs to defend herself, the spastic way her campaign responds to being pinned shows exactly how out of her league she has found herself. Comparing Jim Ryun to Hillary Clinton and trying to skew a poll on a new channel's web site were both childish and, honestly, unbecoming of someone who holds a statewide office.

You know, it does make us pause and thing, though. Patrick Leopold, who is Lynn's campaign manager, makes a good point through all of this: Jim Ryun has no business calling anyone unethical because he was, indeed, the epitome of the corrupt Republican Congress that was just thrown out on their heels in 2006.

We all know that one's true, we know that's one of the reasons Jim is "Ex-Congressman" instead of "Congressman," but, heck, we didn't know Lynn was right there with him, too. But, really, please keep up the good work- you both just keep on reminding all the voters in Nancy Boyda's district why neither of you are fit to serve in the US Congress.

KTKA calls Lynn Jenkins out on being paranoid

Since the story broke in the Kansas City Star, Lynn Jenkins has been racked over the coals by this blog and two of the major TV stations in Topeka for what the Ryun campaign (rightly) calls unethical campaign ads being paid for by people Lynn kindly awarded with a multi-million dollar state contract.

Yesterday we published the e-mail Lynn Jenkins sent out to her supporters asking them to vote in a poll on the KTKA web site- in hopes, of course, that they would sway the poll and prevent her from public embarrassment. By the time we even knew there was a poll, it was too late, and Lynn's minions had already effected their rigging.

No matter. KTKA comes back today with a piece by Jesse Fray, that does a fine job explaining what it is Jenkins has done, and what her Republican opponent, Jim Ryun, has to say about it:

We agree wholeheartedly with both Mr. Robertson (that's got to stop...) and Mr. Smith- it's obvious Jenkins knows she's done something wrong, or she wouldn't be trying so hard to fix it, and it's obvious that Lynn Jenkins is the most paranoid candidate running for anything in Kansas in 2008. Her e-mail attacking Ryun was over the top, and her efforts to prevent the public from being heard on KTKA's poll were foolish.

It's all par for the course, though- like we said yesterday, she's overreacted every time she's been confronted with a "campaign crisis." Tell me, how much confidence does that instill in all of you folks with her ability to deal with real problems. It's scares the hell out of all of us