Oberlander's chickens are coming home to roost
/Or that’s what I’m hearing. We’ve previously detailed Selectman candidate’s illegal campaign fraud, but things are heating up. On Wednesday, Oberlander and four other BET Democrat members are going to be fined $50,000 by the SEEC for their 2017 election fraud. That will be the largest fine ever imposed on a local race in Connecticut history, but Hearst and, sadly, because he used to be an objective reporter, Bob Horton are downplaying it.
The gist of the Democrat’s conspiracy to gain control of the Board of Estimate and Taxation was this: while the BET is split, 6 Republicans and 6 Democrats, the chairmanship of the board, with a deciding vote, belongs to the party that receives the most votes in the general election. Democrat candidate Tony Turner set up a scheme, with the knowledge and consent of his fellow Democrat candidates, including Oberlander, to funnel $350,000 in outside funds into a “get out the vote campaign”, designed to elicit votes for all six Democrat candidates but purporting to be a “Vote for Tony” effort exclusively. Remember, as individuals, Turner and his friends faced no opposition; there was no reason to spend a single dollar on his guaranteed victory, but there was a reason to generate as large a vote for the collective body of Democrat candidates: control of the BET. So Oberland and the rest dutifully filed false statements that they would be spending no more than $1,000 on their personal campaigns and set Tony Turner loose to flood the election with dark money.
The SEEC consent decree, linked to in my original post, reprinted the emails from Turner to Oberlander et als that establish this illegal circumvention of election law, and fined Turner $52,000. Oberlander and her apologists like Horton brushed off the SEEC decision as a one-off event, limited strictly to the actions of that over-enthusiastic campaigner, crazy Tony. Come Wednesday, that excuse will no longer hold up.
Again: unsourced news here, but from a “usually reliable source”. He emailed me from Nigeria, but that just shows how far this news has leaked, eh?
