Wyoming Vote Tracker

I have decided to revisit the dreaded Mark Gordon post. I’m not going to repost all the information here, but if you haven’t looked at it, you should see the 7500 reasons to be concerned about the possibility of Mark Gordon being the Republican nominee for our lone Wyoming vote in the U.S. House. After you take a look at it, come back to this post for some updates.

• In case you didn’t go back to the original post, I would like to point out a typographical error in the documentation. I’m not sure if it’s on the part of Sierra Club, the FEC, or Mark Gordon himself, but the donation record lists Mark Gordon as being from Buffalo, NY. At first glance, you might wonder why the record was included in the listing. Simply put, the ZIP Code from the Sierra Club donation record are a perfect match with the other objectionable donation records. Translation, the Mark Gordon from “Buffalo, NY” is actually the “Republican” Congressional candidate Mark Gordon from Buffalo, WY.
• The story is gaining some momentum and more shocking information is turning up! I did a Google to see if anything was being said about this disturbing topic and discovered that Wyoming Network Forum members love the subject here, here, and here. In the last thread cited, after citing the 2006 $1,000 gift to the Trauner camp, grapevine went on to share the following:
  

  (Gordon’s wife, Jennie, also gave Gary Trauner $1,000 in 2006) They made NO contributions to any Republican candidates or committees in 2006.

  Mark Gordon only began seriously giving to Republican causes when he decided to run as a Republican for Congress:

  December 2007: Republican National Committee: $1,000

  December 2007: Republican National Congressional Committee: $2,000

  February 2008: Republican National Committee: $1,000

  All very self-serving contributions, if you ask me.

  This begs the question, why would Mark Gordon and his wife support Gary Trauner to the tune of $2,000 in 2006 and then run against Trauner in 2008? A little too cozy with the “competition”, don’t you think?

  This info came from FEC.gov. You can look up your own contribution record, or anyone else’s for that matter.

  Mark Gordon is running as a Republican to try to get the majority uninformed “auto-voters” to go his way. It’s up to Republicans to publish Mark Gordon’s Democratic contribution record. He’s sure not going to do it!

• Tieki Rae also spoke passionately in the original post:
  

  …for whatever reason Gordon’s financial/political history has been mum so far. I’m definitely going to post about this later, probably when I’m back in the Wyo and talking about state politics again. […]

  I can’t believe that this hasn’t been discussed yet and that this guy is actually considered a contender for the REPUBLICAN party!

  Folks, you heard the lady: Get this information out there and let’s seriously talk about it!!! I also like what Kevin GOPer had to say on WNF:

  …is [Gordon] a plant by Gary Trauner to cause problems in the Republican primary and damage our candidate going into the general election? […]

  I don’t think Gary Trauner is very smart politically and I can [see] his idiot local [advisers] (whom I know) try to put someone in the GOP primary to damage the real Republicans. Is Gordon this straw man? Certainly his Republican credentials should be closely examined and questioned.

  I couldn’t agree more. Sure, he might be filthy rich, but it’s not about personal money. Gary Trauner didn’t give himself $400,000. Our nominee is going to get financial help from the Party on the national level. The RNC will be more than willing to help keep our vote Republican and the NRCC will work to that end as well. They know the Dems are filling coffers in this state and sending in troops. They also know that Wyoming’s vote, though small, is important.

• So, you wanna know how to find this stuff on the FEC website? It’s actually, fairly simple once you get to where you need to be. Getting there is 90% of the task:
  • Go to http://www.fec.gov (it appears that the “www” is very important since the standard “fec.gov” returns an error)
  • Click on Site Map (the website equivalent to a Table of Contents) and scroll down to Campaign Finance Reports and Data>Search the Disclosure Database>Individual Search
  • There’s a lot of fellers out there named Mark Gordon, so click on the Advanced Search option before filling in the basic First and Last Name form
  • Be sure to use the Last Name, First Name format in filling out the form. Use Buffalo as the City, but do not select a specific state as this will eliminate the Sierra Club donation. This is all the information you need. Click on Send Query, and prepare to be amazed. You’ll even find the $300,000 he donated to himself listed. Ironic that that you can give unlimited sums of money to your own campaign, but you can only throw $2,300 to a friend or relative. Please note that the donations are not listed chronologically across the board.
  • There is no way to directly link to the results page. A temporary cgi-bin is used to retrieve the information requested in the search. There’s no “Mark Gordon from Buffalo, Any State” database in the FEC website.
  • To show he can give a sumly amount to a Republican campaign other than his own, he sent $1,000 of to a Republican Congressional candidate in Maine. I think it was Shania Twain that popularized the phrase that don’t impress me much. And of course we all know that elected Republicans from Maine are such stellar examples of rock-ribbed, down-the-line-conservatism on all the issues.

I’m sure many of you out there are clamoring, Scott, just shut up about the donations! They were in the past for crying out loud! Besides, he’s donating Republican now! I know they were in the past. I’ve done stupid in the past too. However, the size and who received the donations seems to me (and other informed/concerned Republicans) to be of great importance and concern. I also know that the Gordon commercials, aside from the fact that they are substantive, give you Obamamania-like goose bumps–well, that  is until you see the information about his past donations.

We already have John McCain as our presumptive Republican Presidential nominee. We don’t need the younger version of him going to Washington on our behalf.

3 Comments »