Connolly investigated for BexarMet Contributions
The district attorney’s office is now looking into the political machinations at the Bexar Metropolitan Water District, where the agency’s contract spokesman and his employees have heavily funded the campaigns of two board candidates.
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Campaign records revealed last week that T.J. Connolly and five other members of his firm, Connolly & Company, had given District 3 board candidate Blanche Atkinson all of the $6,250 her campaign had received for the May 12 election.
Those records also showed that District 7 board incumbent James Fenimore had received $4,000 — more than half of the $7,450 he had raised — from Lindsay Smith, Connolly & Company’s senior account executive.
Those donations came a month after the BexarMet board voted to extend and increase its public relations contract with Connolly & Company. The firm’s fee went from $5,000 a month to $10,000 monthly.
Connolly, who has acknowledged playing the unusual role of taking campaign contributions from the two candidates and then paying their political consultant, JoAnn Ramón, said Saturday “the investigation is welcomed.”
“It’ll be a pretty short inquiry,” he said, adding it has “almost been impossible” for the BexarMet candidates to raise campaign funds because of the legislative efforts by Puente to dissolve the agency’s board.
“When the DA’s office looks into it, they’re going to find donations that were proper and that the people in my firm who gave money did so of their own volition,” Connolly said.
I am glad that T.J.Connolly “welcomes the investigation.” I can’t imagine that is anything but a huge overstatement but I don’t think it will matter. I would expect it probably will be a very short investigation because I am sure Connolly & Company put their ducks in a row before they made the contributions. These are politically savvy people and while the contributions certainly have a ick factor I am they fall within the letter of the law.
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Filed under: Bexar Met, Bexar Metropolitan Water District, BexarMet, Robert Puente, T.J. Connolly
[...] has new members with Blanche Atkinson, who received all $6,250 of her campaign contributions T.J. Connolly and five other members of his fi…, and Debra Eaton, who wasn’t the candidate the T.J. Connolly was backing filling those [...]
[...] fun to watch this on the news last night since we were talking about it in March and then again in April. I don’t know, in April I felt that the contributions were probably “legal” even [...]