Friday, June 21, 2002
The state treasurer said he did nothing illegal regarding contributions to his campaign.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Ohio Treasurer Joseph T. Deters knows he is the most vulnerable non judicial statewide candidate on the Republican ballot this year.
After all, the four other Republicans running for executive branch seats have won multiple statewide elections. Deters has only one statewide victory to his name.
A statewide poll that has Republican leanings shows Deters as the only statewide Republican candidate trailing the Democratic challenger.
Also, he is on the defensive regarding reports in The Plain Dealer that he directed donations to the Hamilton County Republican Party, which he once headed, and was then the beneficiary of most of that money, and that about two-thirds of his donations came from people with financial ties to his office.
Telling his version
For the past two weeks, Deters said he has been meeting with newspaper editorial boards to give his version of the Cleveland newspaper's reports. He met Thursday with The Vindicator. He is in the Mahoning Valley to hold his "Women and Money" seminar today at Youngstown State University.
"You try to be big about it, but it's not a pleasant thing to go through," Deters said. "They're accusing me of committing a felony."
Deters said there is no "pay-to-play" policy in his office, and that 85 percent of the money he has raised for his political campaigns has come from people who have nothing to do with his job as treasurer.
The Plain Dealer found that about two-thirds of the $4 million Deters raised since 1998 can be traced to those doing business with his office, their families, business affiliates, company political action committees and lobbyists. The newspaper examined Deters' financial reports as well as those of the state GOP, and the Hamilton County Republican Party.
Deters disputed the methodology of the newspaper's study, which he called bizarre, and said, based on how they determined who gave him money, he was surprised they could link only two-thirds of his contributors.
Defended donations
He also defended his actions to direct donations to the Hamilton County Republicans, which has given about $300,000 to his campaign in a little more than a year, more than all other Republican county parties in the state combined.
"Every statewide candidate uses county parties to help with their campaigns," he said. "A week of television in the state costs $1 million. It requires raising a lot of money. County parties can donate over $1 million in an election cycle ... If people want to help me, they can give to my campaign or to a county party inclined to give to my campaign."
It would violate state law for county parties to accept money from an individual or a PAC with the sole intention of turning all of that money over to the candidate who solicited the donation. Deters said he never did that.
"These are the rules we play by," Deters said. "I think they're very bad rules."
Deters would prefer to remove the restrictions on the amount of money a person can give a candidate's campaign, and calls for immediate disclosure of donations to candidates.
Opponent's response
Mary Boyle, Deters' Democratic opponent, said in a prepared statement that the treasurer's fund-raising practices were "suspect."
"From the minute I entered [the] treasurer's race, I received numerous anonymous phone calls and letters to our office about the culture of corruption in the treasurer's office," she said. "... Pay-for-play politics has cost the people of this state millions."
skolnick@vindy.com