{"id":6331,"date":"2016-02-11T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6331"},"modified":"2016-02-10T17:19:16","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T22:19:16","slug":"jawando-facing-renewed-scrutiny-for-unreturned-turing-pharma-donations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6331","title":{"rendered":"Jawando Facing Renewed Scrutiny for Unreturned Turing Pharma Donations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will Jawando<\/a> is running to be the Democratic nominee for the open Eighth Congressional District. Earlier in the campaign, he faced scrutiny for his acceptance of large donations from infamous Turing Pharamceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli. Jawando had promised to refund these donations or to give them to charity but the Center for Responsive Politics<\/a> reports that Jawando still has half the money:<\/p>\n

About 8 percent of [Jawando’s] money \u2014 $28,300 \u2014 was given by either Martin Shkreli or employees of his former company, Turing Pharmaceuticals. After\u00a0Shkreli became the infamous \u201cpharma bro\u201d \u2014 a superlative he earned when Turing hiked the price of a lifesaving drug from $13.50 to $750 per pill last year \u2014\u00a0Jawando did not\u00a0give all of Shkreli\u2019s money to charity, as he said he would.\u00a0<\/strong>Rather, he kept half of it, or $2,700 the campaign had earmarked for the general election.<\/p>\n

Jawando\u2019s campaign told OpenSecrets Blog<\/em> in an email that it would donate the rest of the money after Jawando wins the primary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the Center for Responsive Politics<\/a>, Jawando misled the Washington Blade<\/a><\/em> about having already donated the entire sum:<\/p>\n

In an email to the Washington Blade<\/a><\/em> in early January, the campaign said it had already donated the money. Federal Election Committee records<\/a> tell a different story. The day after the\u00a0Baltimore Sun<\/em> article ran, on the day Shkreli resigned as Turing\u2019s CEO, Jawando\u2019s campaign donated half of what Shkreli had contributed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur compliance attorneys told us that that other half is earmarked for the general election,\u201d a representative of the campaign told OpenSecrets Blog; he said the rest of the money would be donated to the Boys and Girls Club if Jawando wins the primary. If he loses, the campaign will have to refund that money to Shkreli.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moreover, Jawando has not returned donations from other employees of Turing Pharaceuticals:<\/p>\n

But what about the $22,900 from six other Turing employees? The campaign is keeping that. \u201cThey didn\u2019t do anything illegal,\u201d said Aubrey Sylvester, Jawando\u2019s campaign manager. \u201cThey weren\u2019t indicted for anything.\u201d Asked whether the fact that such a significant portion of the campaign\u2019s total contributions has come from employees of a single company \u2014 one that\u2019s currently being investigated<\/a> for pharmaceutical price gouging \u2014 would affect Jawando\u2019s policies, Sylvester\u00a0said no.<\/p>\n

Jawando is the only candidate that five of the six other Turing contributors\u00a0have supported with contributions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Has Jawando done anything illegal? Absolutely not. Indeed, I imagine he would say that it will all end up refunded or donated, so what’s the difference?<\/p>\n

The problem is strictly political. Failure to get rid of the donations despite reports that this was planned and even occurred will not enhance views of Jawando among voters and keeps continued focus on a negative story. Instead, it would have been better to act decisively and return these problematic donations or just be up front and say he’s going to keep them but retains the same stands he’s always had on these issues.<\/p>\n

Not a permanently disabling move by this promising young Democrat who performed very respectably in the 2014 Democratic primary for delegate even if he didn’t win a seat. But also not good news for his underdog congressional campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will Jawando is running to be the Democratic nominee for the open Eighth Congressional District. Earlier in the campaign, he faced scrutiny for his acceptance of large donations from infamous Turing Pharamceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli. Jawando had promised to refund these donations or to give them to charity but the Center for Responsive Politics reports … Continue reading Jawando Facing Renewed Scrutiny for Unreturned Turing Pharma Donations<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1330],"tags":[703],"class_list":["post-6331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eighth-congressional-district","tag-will-jawando"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-1E7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6331"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6336,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6331\/revisions\/6336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}