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Ethics complaints from Moon and Durkan Campaigns

In the last two days, as the Seattle mayoral election rapidly approaches, both Cary Moon and Jenny Durkan are fielding accusations of ethics violations. One in the form of a potentially misleading campaign ad, the other, is a question of improper campaign financing.

Jenny Durkan’s campaign recently released a campaign ad that has been called into question. The ad, which attacks Moon’s prior job experience, uses footage from an interview between KIRO 7’s Essex Porter and Cary Moon. Moon’s campaign released a statement this morning calling out the ad as a “blatant misrepresentation” of the original interview. Moon’s campaign writes,

“The Durkan attack ad uses footage from the KIRO 7 interview to attack Cary Moon, deliberately misleading voters on Moon’s actual statements in the interview with deceptive edits, intentionally taking Moon’s words out of context.”

Bre Weider, Moon’s Communications Director called this a “desperate and ugly tactic” and called for the Durkan campaign to take down the ad.

On the other side of the debate, on October 25, Jenny Durkan’s campaign sent a letter to Wayne Barnett, the Executive Director of Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, accusing Moon’s campaign of violating campaign finance laws. The letter references the increased financial restrictions that come into play during the final 21 days of an election. Based off Moon’s campaign filings, Durkan’s campaign claims Moon is either contributing tens of thousands of dollars to her own campaign, or her campaign’s vendors are making tens of thousands of dollars of in-kind donations (both of which are illegal). The letter calls for an investigation and states,

“A review of the campaign finance filings by the Cary Moon campaign indicates that Ms. Moon and her campaign consultants are currently engaged in a complete end run around our late stage campaign restrictions, violating both the spirit and I believe the letter of our campaign finance laws. A close look at the Moon campaigns recent filings indicates that one of two things, both illegal, is going on.”

Moon’s campaign has rejected these charges and says all finances are in compliance with state and city rules.


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