http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/pol.../72597244/
COLUMBUS – Just months before the 2013 election, a mysterious group spent thousands on a radio advertisement and flyers attacking Councilman Chris Smitherman and promoting his Democratic challengers.
For years, it wasn’t clear who donated $300,000 to the nonprofit Cincinnatians for Jobs Now, which denounced Smitherman while supporting Democratic candidates Chris Seelbach and Michelle Dillingham. The group never filed paperwork with local election officials that would reveal who gave them money and how it was spent.
New public records show several local labor unions donated the money. Three of the four checks, totaling $275,000, appear to be signed by union organizer Robert Richardson Sr. Smitherman, an independent, and Richardson were rivals in a race for president of the local NAACP chapter the year before.
At the time, millions of dollars in union construction contracts were at stake.
City Council members were fighting over a responsible bidder ordinance that would have given unions exclusive rights to build water and sewer projects worth billions of dollars. Smitherman was against the idea, saying he did not think it was legal. A judge would later determine the city doesn't have the authority to impose its own rules because the county, as owner of the sewer district, gets final say.
“This wasn’t an inadvertent mistake,” said attorney Curt Hartman, who helped file the complaint. “This was a conscious and deliberate effort to avoid law. They say they are a (nonprofit) to educate, but they were really a political action committee because the advertisements expressed advocacy – vote for this person, vote against this person.”
White said in the deposition that he never coordinated with union officials, including Richardson Sr., in creating or operating Cincinnatians for Jobs Now. But Hartman isn’t buying it. He wants to depose Richardson Sr. to find out what he knew.
Cincinnatians for Jobs Now targeted black voters in mailers and on Radio One radio stations that cater to minority audiences with messages like: “Chris Smitherman likes to sing the Black (American) National Anthem, but he doesn’t support our issues. Smitherman has formed an alliance with the Tea Party, who is trying to destroy our community and government. ... Vote for anybody but Smitherman for council.”
Smitherman said the reference to “our issues” is a veiled reference to Mahogany’s, a city-supported, minority owned restaurant at The Banks. Smitherman voted against giving the owner a subsidy. It eventually closed and the city won’t recoup all of its losses.
