Clallam County commissioner candidate Jim McEntire vowed Monday to file a complaint by Friday with the state Public Disclosure Commission over an allegedly misleading campaign flier that his opponent, Linda Barnfather, mailed to voters last week.
Republican McEntire, 61, a Port of Port Angeles commissioner who represents Sequim District 1, said an endorsement quote in the flier by retired Navy Rear Adm. Robert McClinton, who lives in Sequim, was fabricated.
Democrat Barnfather, 48, responded in a prepared statement that there was “miscommunication between me and my campaign team as it relates to the quote.”
Barnfather, an executive legislative assistant to 24th District state Rep. Kevin Van De Wege of Sequim, also offered the following statement from McClinton as part of the press release:
“While those were not my words, my support of Linda’s candidacy remains steadfast,” McClinton said.
McEntire also took issue with a topic that has simmered in Peninsula Daily News letters to the editor — and to a limited extent at campaign forums — but which Barnfather expounded upon in her flier:
McEntire’s use of public money during trips as a port commissioner.
“No More Expensive Dinners and Sticking Taxpayers with the Tab,” Barnfather said in the flier.
“[McEntire] spent precious tax dollars on numerous dinners of more than $100 each on political junkets in Washington, D.C., and Tacoma,” she said.
McEntire did not take issue with the actual expenditures, which he said were legal.
Port expenditures are reviewed during an annual audit by the state Auditor’s Office, he said.
Rather, he criticized Barnfather’s use of the term “tax dollars,” saying his expenditures were paid for through proceeds from the port’s “business operations” such as rent and not directly from taxes.
“If Linda had use the term public funds, I would not have an issue — that is correct,” McEntire said.
“It is incorrect to say taxpayer funding is used to fund any port operations in conducting commissioners’ travel and commissioners’ expenditures.”
It would be “equally OK” to use actual tax dollars for dinners and other expenditures, but that’s not how the port operates, instead spending property tax levy proceeds on capital projects, he said.
“Public money includes taxpayer money,” he said. “Taxpayer money is a particular category of public money.”
Barnfather defended the flier’s claim and said McEntire’s expenditures were the real issue.
“It’s all public money, and we have a fiduciary responsibility as elected officials to be prudent with the public’s money,” she said Monday.
“I think we have very different views on being fiscally responsible.”
She also said she stood by her endorsement by McClinton.
McEntire said he would likely file a complaint regarding the false quote under the state law that makes it a violation to have “political advertising or an electioneering communication that makes either directly or indirectly a false claim stating or implying the support or endorsement of any person or organization when in fact the candidate does not have such support or endorsement.”
McEntire said it did not matter that McClinton reiterated the endorsement of Barnfather.
“The main reason is you don’t make stuff up and put it in a political mailing,” McEntire said.
“The issue is not the person who gave Linda the words” that were in the flier, he said.
“The issue is the behavior of a political campaign to make stuff up and put it in a mailing.”
McEntire also said listing McClinton in the flier as “former president, North Olympic chapter, Military Officers Association of America, Sequim” implied that the organization supported Barnfather.
“The one thing I am hearing continuously about today’s politics is that everyone is sick of spin, dishonesty, innuendo and negativism,” he said.
“The only way to change that behavior is to call it out and have people pay a price for it. The way I read the law, I think the law was broken.”
Barnfather shrugged off McEntire’s claims.
“Any citizen has a right to file a complaint with the PDC.”
McEntire and Barnfather are running to replace outgoing Democrat Steve Tharinger, who will continue as a member of the state House of Representatives for the 24th Legislative District.
Ballots in the all-mail were mailed to county voters last week and must be postmarked or deposited in drop boxes or at the county Auditor’s Office by 8 p.m. Nov. 8.
________
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
