Sharen Neuhardt has friends in strange places


Since the “journalists” in Dayton are completely ignoring the 10 candidates for Congress- except of course the incumbent who they believe will have a walk in the park, it’s up to me to do the digging (with a little help from my valued readers).

I got an email tonight, while at the Wright Library in Oakwood for another Democratic candidates’ night. This time, only four of the six showed up (Tom McMasters, Ryan Steele,  Sharen Neuhardt, and I). The other three are starting to sound repetitive to me, but I’m still working on refining my pitch. Luckily, we were doing the 5 minutes of speech, 5 minutes for 2 questions and then a 2 minute close at the end. I’d already gone when I checked my email:

from Campaignmoney.com for Sharen’s 2008 campaign against Steve Austria:

Sharen Neuhardt, in her 2008 campaign, received campaign contributions from:

I’ve written about Deutsche Bank before on this site– residents in Price Hill were sick and tired of foreclosed properties owned by Deutsche Bank not maintaining their properties. But, why did Mr.. Ferron and his wife give so much money to Sharen?

Well, he gave a bunch of money to Democrats. $118,486  in 2008 alone. Soon after this cycle, he left DB- and was recently appointed to the Public Utilities Commission of California. Here’s his bio:

22 Mar 2011: Mark Ferron, 52, of Mill Valley, has been appointed to the California Public Utilities Commission. Ferron worked as chief operating officer for the Global Markets Division of Deutsche Bank in London from 2001 to 2009, where he had responsibility for all operational activities globally across fixed income, currency, commodity and equity markets. Before joining Deutsche Bank in 1996, Ferron was a vice president at Salomon Brothers from 1994 to 1996, and was a vice president at Bank of America from 1986 to 1994. Currently, he is a senior partner at Silicon Valley Social Ventures and is a board fellow of the New Teacher Center. Ferron holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in economics from Stanford University. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $128,109. Ferron is a Democrat.

via Office of Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. – Newsroom.

Obviously, Mr. Ferron has taken quite a pay cut, he’d have to live on about $10K a year now if he kept up his previous level of “donating” to the election of the best politicians money can buy.

I’d never heard of Herb Sandler or World Savings and Loan- but I took my reader’s word that they probably don’t have any real business in the old OH-7 district. But, a little Google and we find that, yes, Time magazine blamed them, but, there is also a link to their rebuttal as a PDF. I’m not going to try to decipher if the Sandlers were good people or bad people, but I can tell you they are very rich and like to give money to political candidates. I doubt, they could find their way from Xenia to Sharen’s farm in Yellow Springs without a GPS, but, this is the kind of money in politics that takes our campaigns away from the people who actually vote and puts it in the hands of the super rich.

Lewis Kaden is a fine Harvard Grad who sits on all kinds of boards (he’s connected) and made $6.7 million in 2007, so giving Sharen $2,300 was like you losing a penny. It’s great and grand that he wants Democrats in Congress- especially, since he would need all the help from Congress he could get to bail Citigroup out- and not put him and the rest of his brilliant overpaid shysters in prison. Sharen might have needed the $2k, but Citigroup needed $45 billion to stay in business and keep paying these people their outrageous salaries. Just to note, despite bankrupting the country- no one at this level has been held accountable for the financial disaster. Again- Lewis wouldn’t know WYSO from WTUE, he just was covering his bets.

Which brings us to question who won’t Ms. Neuhardt take money from? She’s proudly announcing that the State AFL-CIO has already endorsed her (without them talking to any other candidates or asking their members whom they would support). She’s hired a staffer to follow her around like a lap dog to events- where she doesn’t even have a handout and her site is still a press release.

I’ve always marveled that candidates can stand in front of an audience and waste time talking about their parents, their big farm in Yellow Springs and where they are from instead of the issues. When pressed about if she supports single payer health care, she goes on a rant about it being a good idea 50 years ago, but couldn’t work now. Of course, she doesn’t pay her own health insurance working for a firm full of lawyers who can all give her $2,300 each.

In fact, looking down her list of top donors you see a ton of lawyers- and I also see the name of Matthew O. Diggs, tossing her $1,000 to hedge his bets. He’s one of the big donors to Mike Turner (he shows up in two different listings- one with donations to Neuhardt and Romney and another to McCain/Palin, Turner and the party). Does Neuhardt know anyone who isn’t a lawyer or wealthy?

I’ve already posted about candidate efficiency and shown the kind of campaign work she produces. You can also find the horrible ads that Steve Austria did painting her as a lawyer who helps companies to off-shore jobs (she did work as corporate counsel at LexisNexis a company that has no problem shuttling people over from India to do work here because they can’t seem to find Americans to do it). The reality is, after listening to her speak time and time again, I’ve yet to hear what she will do for us or how she will beat Mike Turner. Steve Austria knew he couldn’t beat Turner in the new district and did a deal to drop out and she couldn’t beat Austria as a rookie despite a good amount of money.

Now you have a little insight on where she gets her campaign cash, I guess you can think, at least I won’t have to donate since she can hit up all her rich friends, but, this is exactly why she can’t win. If you can’t connect with voters in 2012, you won’t get elected. I guess it will come down to who do you want buying your congressman if you continue to let this insanity of “citizens united” pollute the democratic process.

I won’t take money from PACs, Special Interests, Lobbyists, Corporations. That way I can sleep at night.

If you believe that primaries should be decided by the people in our district instead of bankers from London and NYC, please consider donating to my campaign. I need to print my next campaign piece- a doorhanger, so my volunteers can start knocking on doors. Cost is less than $500. Thank you.

If you enjoyed reading true breaking news, instead of broken news from the major media in Dayton, make sure you subscribe to this site for an email every time I post. If you wish to support this blog and independent journalism in Dayton, consider donating. All of the effort that goes into writing posts and creating videos comes directly out of my pocket, so any amount helps! Please also subscribe to the Youtube channel for notifications of every video we launch – including the livestreams.