News of a potential ethics probe - unrelated to Turner; unfavorable toward Shontel Brown. News of
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The Intercept: "In the Race Against Nina Turner, GOP Donors Fund Shontel Brown - With one week left in the Ohio primary, Republican donors have picked their Democrat — and the pro-Israel PAC supporting her.
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Newsweek: Hillary Clinton-endorsed Candidate Shontel Brown Faces Potential Ethics Probe -- By Walker Bragman and Andrew Perez, Daily Poster On 7/27/21 at 8:45 AM EDT
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truthout: Nina Turner Opponent Facing Potential Ethics Probe for $17 Million in Contracts
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https://www.dailyposter.com/house-candidate-shontel-brown-facing-potential-ethics-probe/ (behind a paywall - presumably as published by Newsweek)
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From its title the Intercept Story appears independent of any ethics dimension. However, opening paragraphs state -
As the Democratic primary for Ohio’s 11th Congressional District draws to a close, establishment pick Shontel Brown, a current Cuyahoga County Council Member and county Democratic Party chair, is facing a potential ethics probe for her past work supporting millions of dollars in contracts awarded to companies run by her partner and campaign donors. According to a story published Tuesday by Newsweek and the Daily Poster, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office took interest in an earlier Intercept story and in June referred it to the state auditor’s office, where officials agreed the matter should go before the state ethics commission. Meanwhile, and unrelated to the potential probe, newly released campaign finance disclosures show that Brown and a major Democratic PAC supporting her campaign have been heavily funded by donors who usually support Republicans.
The revelations come with just one week left in the contest between Brown and Nina Turner, a progressive former state senator who stumped for Sen. Bernie Sanders during his 2016 and 2020 presidential runs and who, to many observers, remains representative of his campaign against Hillary Clinton.
Well, that link, of an "earlier Intercept story," drops the shoe -
When Shontel Brown was running for her seat on Cuyahoga County Council in 2014, she responded to questions about her links to the family of a major contractor by promising to “recuse herself from county contracts with ties to Mark Perkins as necessary.” Perkins, Brown’s partner, has longstanding ties to the Cleveland-based general contractor Perk.
On February 28, 2017, Brown deemed recusal unnecessary and voted with her colleagues to give a nearly $7 million contract to Perk. Ten weeks later, one of the firm’s owners helped organize a fundraiser that bankrolled a significant portion of her reelection campaign, making an in-kind donation of $2,000 at a fundraiser for Brown that netted her over $7,000, a significant sum in the low-budget world of Cleveland-area council races. In total, she has approved more than $17 million to Perk and has received $13,000 in campaign donations from the Perkins family and Perk’s current owners, the Cifani family.
Brown is now running in a competitive House primary against Nina Turner to replace Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge in Ohio’s 11th District. Turner, a former Ohio state senator, was a leading surrogate for Bernie Sanders in his two presidential runs. While much of the establishment has lined up behind Brown, who is the head of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, Turner has a bevy of local establishment endorsements as well, including from influential moderate Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson. Turner has significantly outraised Brown, raising $1.6 million in the first quarter of 2021 to Brown’s $680,000, though both candidates’ numbers are high for this early in a congressional primary, which will be held August 3.
Besides the $7 million contract in 2017, Brown also voted on three other occasions to approve Cuyahoga city contracts for Perk, totaling an additional $10 million between 2015 and 2019. And in August 2020, she voted in favor of contracts of $1.875 million to two firms, one headed by Mark Perkins’s sister and a second whose former vice president is another family member of Perkins. Perk and McTech, a company owned by Mark Perkins, are frequent and longtime business associates.
Shontel Brown.
Photo: Cuyahoga County Planning Commission
Perk was co-founded by Charles Perkins, the uncle of Brown’s longtime partner Mark. Perk’s current owners, the Cifani family, have been generous supporters of her campaigns for office. Brown received campaign contributions from the Perkins and Cifani families in her low-budget campaigns for county council and, before that, for city council in the Cleveland suburb of Warrensville Heights, where both she and her mentor, Marcia Fudge, got their political starts.
In response to repeated requests for comment from The Intercept, a spokesperson for Brown’s campaign said that they have “no comment at this time.”
It is not clear if Mark Perkins and Brown are still engaged, as Brown told Cleveland.com in 2014, but people searches show that they have shared addresses, and political contribution records show that they live in the same ZIP code as of 2020. Sources in Cleveland with knowledge of their relationship said that they are still together but not married.
The last bit about cohabitation is gratuitous, and weakens the story.
However, that "no comment at this time" language immediately unpins the bullshit meter - something detected - so with more recent coverage there might be - some comment at this later time.
Sophistry and hand-waving? Or a substantial clarification. We wait and see. (The dailyposter story is dated July 28.)
Time passes. We wait. Voting will be soon.
The above-quoted July14 Intercept item was published two weeks prior to the dailyposter's publishing on July 28. Two intervening weeks - no intervening story from the Shontel campaign.