More Lies from Karen Keiser and the Democrats

In our last post we noted how the Senate Democrats have been propping up the campaign of recently convicted criminal Fred Walser. Indeed, now they've given him another $10,000 in cash, so that the Senate Democrats alone have contributed 39 percent of all of his total cash and in-kind contributions, almost $36,000 (with other Democratic Party committees, it goes up to almost $39,000, 42 percent).

And that's not even including the cost of their lying mailer about Senator Val Stevens, which despicably accused her of "condoning or excusing domestic violence" and "blaming the victim." We proved conclusively that Stevens said no such thing. Everyone can view the video and listen to the audio. There's simply no doubt that the Democrats are lying on behalf of Fred Walser (himself convicted of lying).

Now they're at it again. This time the lie is similar, saying Senator Stevens "compared domestic violence to PMS." It's the same basic lie, the only real difference being that this one makes even less sense, even given the misquote of Stevens. That they keep changing their misinterpretation of Stevens' words is a pretty telling indication that they don't even care about the truth.



On this piece they add in some additional lies, such as that she "supports banning all forms of birth control." Of course none of the other claims are backed up with any sources at all, because no sources exist to back up their lies. Then again, providing sourcing didn't stop them from lying about domestic abuse, either (and even then they couldn't get the date right, claiming their misquote was from a hearing on January 4, 2008, before the legislature was even in session).

It seems that Senator Karen Keiser and her Senate Democratic Campaign Committee have completely lost it. The majority of Democratic Senators can't want to see their money and their name going to waste by supporting a criminal like Fred Walser, let alone being used to spread terrible lies about a Republican colleague.

It's a generally accepted aphorism that "politics ain't beanbag." But one would hope an organization called "The Democratic Party" would, generally speaking, adhere to truth, because democracy only works when people have the facts. Obviously, Senator Karen Keiser and the SDCC couldn't care less about a well-informed electorate, if the truth won't help them win.

A side note: the cost of the mailings is unknown, because "Better Future for Washington," the PAC the Democrats created four weeks ago, reports no expenditures so far, which appears to be a PDC violation, as it is supposed to be reported within 24 hours of being mailed, and it was mailed last week.

Senate Democrats Tell Vile Lies (This Time, Instead of Fred Walser Himself)

That Fred Walser, Democratic candidate for the 39th District Senate seat, tells many lies has been well-documented. He even told a bald-faced lie about his opponent, Senator Val Stevens, in a direct mail piece.

A new mailer has gone out against Stevens, this time paid for by the Washington State Senate Democrats' soft money committee, the Roosevelt Fund, and this lie was even worse, accusing Stevens of "condoning or excusing domestic violence" and "blaming the victim."

The quote they provide doesn't even come close to backing up their claims: she said, "I don't want to confuse the domestic violence issue with women who, excuse me gentlemen, have PMS... I know there are points in time when women can get out of control." But she wasn't talking about people who have been abused. The Senate Democrats are lying.



You can listen to her comments in context (starting around 55:45; there's no transcript, just video and audio) for yourself.

A public health nurse testified that "domestic violence is a very hard thing to measure; we have no statistics that we collect statewide that gives us a true incidence of how often this is happening." So, the nurse noted, GroupHealth researchers took a random sample of women in their HMO population in the Greater Puget Sound region, and called them by telephone, and 44 percent of them said they had been the victim of domestic abuse.

Senator Stevens went on to question the methodology of the study, by noting that women might say on an unsolicited, random telephone call that they were the victim of domestic violence, even if they were not.

Stevens said that women, in a random telephone survey, can "have PMS" which results in them saying they were the victim of domestic abuse, even if it never actually happened. But the Senate Democrats claim she was saying that women can "have PMS" which results in them being abused.

The Senate Democrats are telling vile and despicable lies, and the proof of this is clear.

It might be surprising that the Senate Democrats would send out such a shameless lie, until we realize that they have given Walser -- a convicted criminal who is currently under a suspended one-year jail sentence -- over $25,000, about one-third of Walser's total received contributions.

And that's not even including this expensive mail piece, so it's clear that the Senate Democrats are propping up this campaign of a convicted criminal with a proven record, not just recently, but over many years, of covering up, inventing allegations against his political enemies, protecting his friends at great cost to taxpayers and to the integrity of our public institutions, and, of course, lying. A lot.

And this time the Senate Democrats are lying on his behalf. And why not? Whatever lies they tell pale in comparison to Walser's crimes; since they've already dumped tens of thousands of dollars into his campaign, what have they got to lose by lying?

Fred Walser Makes Things Up Yet Again

In a Fred Walser mail piece I received today, under the header, "Sometimes, our elected officials do confusing things...," Fred Walser claims that incumbent Senator "Val Stevens told local residents they didn't have to cooperate with police. She said, they should hold up a card that reads, 'you don't have authority over me.'"

As usual -- Fred Walser was convicted in June of lying to public officials, and sentenced to a year in jail for it -- Fred Walser is lying. His language clearly implies that Stevens is talking about all residents and all police, but Stevens was specifically and clearly talking about tribal police having no authority over non-tribal residents. Lies by omission and implication are still lies.

And what she said was based on an opinion from the state Attorney General's office, which had just concluded that tribal police officers "generally lack authority to issue citations to non-Indians for traffic activity on public roadways and highways" on reservations.

Apart from the fact that Fred Walser is lying, Walser also is apparently implying that he believes that tribal police SHOULD have authority over non-tribal residents, which isn't necessarily the best position to take in the 39th District.

Fred Walser continues to have a serious problem simply telling the truth, like when he filed a false sexual harassment report, manufactured a fake log in a coverup, told an officer to fake an overtime log, and so on. On Tuesday I went to a forum held by the Monroe Chamber of Commerce, in which Fred Walser took credit for things he never did, including getting money for U.S. 2 safety during the last legislative session.

Fred Walser even had the gall to say he wants to work on "accountability" and "openness and transparency" in government, despite -- as a public official himself -- lying to the public for over a year.

Fred Walser has not given the people a single reason to trust him in the face of his many violations of the public trust, and blatantly lying about his opponent in a mail piece isn't going to help him gain a single voter's trust.

Letter to the Monroe Monitor

To the Editor of the Monroe Monitor:

Traci Hoenstine, a supporter of Fred Walser for Senate, made many claims in a long letter about Walser in the July 15, 2008 edition of the Monroe Monitor. Most of them were false or misleading. The facts tell a different story.

She claimed that Walser's crime was a mere "allegation." No. He was convicted. That he gave an Alford Plea does not change anything: it is a fact of law that Walser committed a crime, and was sentenced to one year in jail for it. If Walser's sentence for his crime had not been suspended, he'd be in jail right now, through the entire election and next legislative session. That Walser refuses to admit his obvious guilt is not a point in his favor.

And contrary to Hoenstine's claims, it is not simply Mayor Tolson that claims he was lied to. Walser lied to several other Sultan city officials and attorneys, to the Everett Police Department, to the Snohomish County Sheriff's Department, to the Washington State Police, and others, including, of course, the people of Sultan.

Walser knew full well that Caroline Pepperell inappropriately accessed Gayle Harvie in the ACCESS database -- as she had also done to others, hundreds of times, which Walser knew when he hired her -- and the very same day he was told and given the proof, by Detective Clinko of the Sheriff's Department, that she did it to Harvie, Walser and Pepperell magically produced a document that said she did not.

And it was this magic document that Walser used for over a year to lie to many people, telling them Pepperell did nothing wrong. It was only when he was faced with an investigation of himself that he somehow "remembered" the original document, which was sitting right in the file all along.

One could be excused for believing this was a simple mistake -- a sign of incompetence, but not malice -- but let us not forget that in the meantime, he violated his oath by refusing to take Pepperell off ACCESS during her investigation despite a direct order to do so; he filed a false sexual harassment complaint against Pepperell's proposed replacement; he tried to convince Sheriff Bart to obstruct the investigation. This is all a matter of public record, and they are not the acts of a man who simply made a "clerical error," as he has claimed. (The primary documents proving the case against Walser are on www.fred-walser.com.)

If Walser has nothing to hide and Pepperell did nothing wrong, why did Walser refuse to even say whether he knew Pepperell, his longtime assistant, when he was deposed in the Harvie lawsuit a few weeks ago?

Hoenstine tries to throw out various logical fallacies to misdirect the readers by pointing at Walser being "gunned after" and saying "the City does it too." None of that matters, because even if entirely true, none of it justifies his crimes and misdeeds.

But as Hoenstine brought up the dismissed harassment complaint against Walser, it should be noted that Pepperell was Walser's alibi for that, which might explain why he has gone to such extraordinary lengths to violate the law and ethics and common sense to protect her.

Maybe some people do not believe Walser's persistent lies, coverups, and obstructions are "serious." Hoenstine doesn't. I believe she is in the minority.

Also, I should note that despite Walser's U.S. 2 Safety Coalition getting credit for U.S. 2 funding in the last legislative session, it was, actually, the work of our current 39th District legislators -- Dan Kristiansen, Kirk Pearson, and Walser's opponent, Val Stevens -- in highlighting the issue and fighting for funding that made the biggest difference. That Democrats in the Senate gave credit to an organization run by a Democratic candidate for Senate should come as no surprise, and doesn't actually mean anything, especially coming from Senator Haugen, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, who got $13m for an Amtrak station and $82m for congestion relief on a road, both in her own district, but could only find $14m for safety improvements on U.S. 2.

Last year Haugen actually said that U.S. 2 doesn't get safety funding because the voters of the 39th District voted against the gas tax, and voted for Republicans who opposed the gas tax. She is, literally, punishing the citizens with more death on U.S. 2 because she doesn't like how we voted. Haugen and the Democrats have been blocking U.S. 2 improvements out of political self-interest and vindictiveness.


Chris Nandor
Chair of Snohomish County 39th District Republicans