Back in May, Ann Davison, the Republican candidate for City Attorney, briefly listed Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss as an endorser on her website, before deleting it. I pointed this out during public comment at a City Council meeting, and Strauss said he had never endorsed Ann Davison and had no idea how he ended up listed as an endorser.
I filed a complaint afterwards with the Public Disclosure Commission. (This is not to be confused with the separate complaint that I filed with the bar association, about Davison’s office putting out a press release containing incorrect statements about a judge, as well as the judge filing her own bar complaint for the same reason. Those complaints have not yet been resolved.)
Yesterday the PDC emailed me a response indicating that they were dismissing the complaint, after receiving this response from the Davison campaign:
“There were plans for discussions with Councilmember Strauss regarding a potential endorsement. During a recent website update, a draft target list – not the final endorsement list – was mistakenly sent to our web designer. As a result, Councilmember Strauss was unintentionally listed as an endorser due to a miscommunication between campaign staff and the design team. The error was promptly identified and corrected, with the graphic removed immediately – well before any formal complaint was filed. An apology was also given to Councilmember Strauss. We are sorry for the mistake and have implemented new safeguards to prevent similar errors in the future.”
The PDC letter concludes:
The PDC staff is reminding you about the importance of making endorsements clear to the public on all future political advertising and to properly and accurately depict the endorsement statement and information in the advertisement. This includes personally reviewing future political advertisements to make sure that the information depicted is accurate and in compliance with the statutory scheme.
Still waiting to see if the bar association does anything with the complaints regarding her public attack on Judge Vaddadi.
submitted by /u/bennetthaselton
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