Voters deserve to know how Ned is being financed

(posted on October 13, 2006)

We renewed our call today for Ned to release his family’s tax returns for the past five years. Voters of Connecticut have a right to know where the $9 million that Ned is pouring into his campaign is actually coming from.

This weekend we will be filing our fundraising report with the Federal Elections Commission, which will document the source of every penny our campaign has received over the past two and a half months, and that is as it should be we believe in full disclosure and transparency.

Ned's campaign, on the other hand, will only be disclosing the source of a small percentage of their campaign funding and hiding all the rest. That is because the overwhelming majority of Ned’s campaign funds are coming from the Lamont family’s assets, and Ned has repeatedly refused to let the public see his family’s tax returns, which would show where his campaign funds are actually coming from.

Joe has released his full tax returns from the past five years, but Ned has only released his individual tax return from last year, and that was only because he was pressured into doing so by the news media.

Ned has continued to hide his prior year’s tax returns, which he always filed jointly with his wife until last year. Ned also has not released his wife’s separate tax return for 2005. And he has yet to explain how he can justifying keeping this information secret.

This double standard is indefensible. Just as the public has a right to know how our campaign is being funded, they have the same right to know how Ned’s is being funded too. And the only way to determine that is for Ned to make his family’s tax returns public, so the public can see the source of his and his wife’s income and assets.

Ned and his campaign are planning to comb through our FEC filing and use it to continue their unrelenting negative attacks on Joe. Why should our campaign be denied the same opportunity to ask tough questions about where Ned is getting his campaign money from?

Is Ned’s $9 million coming from investments in the big corporations that he routinely attacks? Is it coming from investments in companies that ship jobs overseas, which Ned also routinely attacks? Is it coming from shady tax shelters that are unavailable to Connecticut’s working families and adding to the federal deficit, which Ned routinely attacks?

These are legitimate questions and they deserve legitimate answers. And that is why we are again calling on Ned to release his family’s tax returns for the last five years.

If Ned really believes in transparency and accountability, and he has nothing to hide, then he will adhere to the same standard followed by Joe and most every other congressional candidate and let the public know exactly how his campaign is being funded.

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Posted by: Eric Blankenbaker on 10/13/2006 at 2:06 PM