Updates
Wednesday/Friday: I heard from Barb Termaat and John Matthews, who are key members of this new organization. Please check their comment/reply that follows this article.
Tuesday: No response yet to my email to the CAC.
Monday: I checked this morning with Kathleen Weitschat, editor of the Elk Rapids News. The ad was submitted anonymously last week and paid for in cash. Kathleen received copy and payment on last Monday in an envelope slipped under the door. A very unusual way to do business indeed. I await a response from the organization to the email I sent yesterday, hoping to find out more about this new and possibly unofficial organization.
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Previous Posting
The recent issue of Elk Rapids News featured a half page ad entitled 215 Dexter Fact Check, which had eight statements and a call to action. The contributor and payer is listed as the Elk Rapids Citizen Action Committee. No other name was given, and I can find no record of an official organization with this name. If it is a Political Action Committee (PAC), as it appears, it has to be registered with the state and have limited contributions coming into it. I searched the state database and found no such PAC (http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127-1633_8723_8751—,00.html)
I have written to the supplied email address, er_citizenaction@yahoo.com, to find out more information. If you know anything about this organization, please let me know. It seems quite unusual to have such an issue-based advertisement published in the Elk Rapids News. It’s more typical for this sort of thing to be presented as a signed Letter to the Editor. It’s my understanding that the Elk Rapids News will not publish unsigned Letters to the Editor, which is perhaps why this was submitted as a paid advertisement.
I’ll check with the Elk Rapids News in the morning to see what I can learn about this ad.
More information about PACs and Michigan law
