Washington DC Politics raises its ugly head....again! 653-thousand dollars worth of corruption

Jabin Botsford/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST - Jeanne Clarke Harris leaves the US District Courthouse after pleading guilty to illegal campaign contrabutions on Tuesday July 10, 2012.

Story by Washington Post 

Written by Mike DuBonis and Nikita Stewart

A secret $653,000 effort funded by one of the District government’s most prominent contractors corrupted the 2010 mayoral race and helped Vincent C. Gray get elected, the city’s top federal prosecutor said Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said the well-funded, well-equipped “shadow campaign” went to work for Gray but was not reported to campaign-finance authorities or disclosed to the voting public.

The revelations came as Jeanne Clarke Harris, a 75-year-old public-relations consultant, admitted in U.S. District Court as part of a plea deal that she helped disburse and conceal the funds spent by businessman Jeffrey E. Thompson.

The secret money bought about 10,000 yard signs, 6,500 T-shirts and 200 umbrellas in addition to banners, lapel stickers, posters, consultants, canvassers, drivers, laptop computers, radios and a public-address system. Many items had logos and designs identical to Gray’s official campaign materials, and many — “if not all” — of the items were delivered to Gray’s campaign headquarters, prosecutors said in a court filing.

At a news conference after Harris’s guilty pleas, Machen decried political corruption in the city, saying that the mayoral race was “compromised by backroom deals, secret payments and a flood of unreported cash.”

“Today’s plea confirms the sad truth that many of us have long feared: that the 2010 mayoral election was corrupted by a massive infusion of cash that was illegally concealed from the voters of the District,” he said.
Prosecutors did not allege that Gray had knowledge of the “shadow campaign,” but they said that the effort was “coordinated” with members of his campaign. And Harris testified that although Thompson wrote the checks, he did not conceive of the scheme.

“The money was from” Thompson, she said in court, “but the plan was developed by another person.” That person was not named Tuesday.

On Tuesday, through spokesman Pedro Ribeiro, Gray declined to comment.