Letter: Writer should be ashamed of his ‘misleading letter’

Editor,

Well, I hope no one ever hires Lee Rebman to analyze campaign contributions. They would be pretty disappointed.

In his letter to the editor, he says that he believes in “following the money to find out where a candidate’s true interests lie.”

He says the Janet St. Clair campaign received a large percentage of her campaign contributions from “Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and other contributors outside of Island County.” He said that she “is bought and paid for by special interests.”

That’s baloney.

More than 76 percent, that’s 569, of her contributors are from Island County. Rick Hannold had only 197 Island County residents donate to him, so she had almost three times the local support that he did.

And what about those “special interests” from out of state? Well, she did have some people from out of state contribute to her, but there were only 10 of them and they only contributed 1 percent of the total — not exactly an example of special interests taking over.

One of those 10 has been in my book club for 10 years, so she can’t be very out of state if she makes a monthly book club.

The others are probably just relatives.

Janet Sinclair’s list of contributors doesn’t tell the story of outside interests planting a dark horse in order to take over our islands. That’s just silly.

Janet is exactly what she seems — a hard-working candidate who has been successful in convincing hundreds of local residents to support her candidacy because once you listen to her you can tell she has the discipline, ideas and skills to do a good job.

And yes, she used to live in Seattle and some of her friends there contributed. So what?

Mr. Rebman should be ashamed of himself for writing such a misleading letter.

Sharon Emerson

Langley