As Gahan carpet-bombs Seabrook with HWC's cash, there is no discussion about real issues. Hmm, do you think that's intentional?

As I've been saying for years, Big Daddy Gahan has never experienced genuine electoral competition, and when at long last he would feel a breath on his neck, the gift-showering avuncular Oz the Great and Powerful pretense would be dropped faster than a snake sheds his skin, and Gahan would go full-tilt Mitch-McConnell-slimeball using all that money showered upon him by pay-to-play special interests.

This we have seen, voluminously (sorry, Shane; look it up).

I received another poison pen mailer yesterday, with another denunciation of Mark Seabrook's conniving county Floyd County government -- in effect, another in a series of diversionary tactics by Gahan and the DemoDisneyDixiecrats ... assembled by a hired assassin company in San Francisco (see links below).

Apart from the characteristically (intentionally) ineffectual League of Women Voters/News and Tribune "forum" at the Silver Street Homerdome in early September, Gahan's seemingly limitless fat cat donor cash has been strategically deployed to eliminate any opportunity to discuss substantive issues.

Nary a word during the campaign has been said about poverty or the homeless (assuredly Gahan's bulldozers remain idling unless a poor person dares interrupt the harmony of his coronation).

We've not heard an exchange of ideas about opioid use, drug addiction or their corollaries of neighborhood crime. 

There has been nothing said about the city's stagnant population growth ("business of residency" apparently has been discarded as insufficiently photogenic), and of course topics like Gahan's public housing putsch, indifference to his own Human Rights Commission "landmark", botched "walkable" street grid implementations or sewer rate INCREASE have been kept safely out of view.

Gahan seemingly has nothing to declare save for his own brilliance, as well as a knack for shaking down political patronage supplicants so that no beak is left unwetted as the Genius of the Floodplain finances another selfless gift to you -- using YOUR credit card and billing YOUR grandchildren for the privilege.

I was hoping Gahan might attend the ribbon re-attachment ceremonies at several downtown businesses which haven't survived his glorious acumen, but he's never seen once the closing padlock snaps, is he?

Sadly, the compromised newspaper's silence is deafening.

And so it's all about the dastardly county Republicans, and it's all about Gahan's money, and my "progressive" neighbors are staying stone-silent about these many other subjects which should be of interest to them; obviously this is all hunky dory if you're Don Gahan and Sancho Dickey.

Get a grip, because you're being duped -- and you know, it might actually be that Gahan and his special interest lubricators want it that way.

Election 2019: The buying and selling of a city, or our updated master list of 73 Gahan wheel-greasers, a veritable pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

So far in 2019, aspiring mayor-for-life Jeff Gahan has raised close to $150,000, combined it with cash on hand in excess of $100,000, and spent more than $200,000 of the total -- and as he's fond of reminding us, he's not finished yet.

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

All this so Gahan can continue his enlightened, selfless administration of a city of 36,000, one with negligible population growth, and with increases in the poverty rate and concentrated poverty rate; few new jobs offering anywhere close to a living wage; but more than 100 new city employees, lots of bread and circuses, and a huge increase in public indebtedness "engineered" by Gahan to convince those few who are doing well that he is a benevolent dictator.

After all, their grandchildren can figure out how to pay the deferred bills.

Gahanism is a bizarre delusion abetted by the unchecked consumption of Kool Aid and Rice Krispies Treats, but the following numbers are purely factual.

They're cumulative Gahan campaign finance haul totals for 2019, to be appended to the numbers quoted in this link (valid through 2018). I'll release an updated list later in the week.

The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 20: Buying and selling a city? Our master list of 59 Gahan wheel-greasers is a pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

Yes, there are the occasional small donation going toward the perpetuation of Jeff Gahan's personality cult, but not many come from disinterested parties (translation: people who don't work for the city and owe their positions to Gahan). They're so numerically rare as to be non-existent.

I hate to be the one to burst pie-in-the-sky bubbles, but the following Top 30 donors are not writing checks to Dear Leader because they think the mayor is handsome or they trust his good nature to improve the lot of humanity. They're doing it because there'll be something coming back to them in return -- and boy, does it ever.

Full stop.

If you're comfortable with this, so be it, but for all our sake, can you stop being hypocritical about it?

* indicates more than $10,000 in donations since 2011
+ is a first-time donor

$1,400 
Sprigler Development Co. LLC (local developers; currently building the townhouses on Vincennes)

$1,650
Axis Architecture & Interiors (no-bid contracts for engineering and design) *

---

$2,000 
Jacob L. Brown (Marian Development Group, apparently working with Chad Sprigler on the Vincennes Street townhouses) +

$2,000 
Mitchell Green (HMB Professional Engineers; Adam "Tricky" Dickey's no-bid employer) +

$2,000
Infinity Homes & Development (suburban McMansion builder; its presence here is one of few mysteries) +

$2,000 
James Kemp (Kemp Law Office/Kemp Title/affiliated with Lancaster Lofts)

$2,000 
Robert E. Lee (EcoTech, the city's sanitation contractor; total includes $1,500 from EcoTech)

$2,000
Patricia Yount (of Lochmueller Group, wastewater consultants) +

$2,400
Frost Brown PAC (no-bid contract-holding legal firm) *

$2,500
Amy Letke (Integrity HR; no-bid city contractor)

---

$3,000
Form G Companies ("land development" company from Jeffersonville) +

$3,000
GM Development Co LLC (Indianapolis-based "consultant") *

$3,000
ProMedia (de facto city propaganda ministry and no-bid contractor) +

$3,000
Colin Receveur (Mt. Tabor Road commercial property owner; this link should explain it) +

$3,000
Christopher Stewart (from no-bid HMB Professional Engineers; Adam "Tricky" Dickey's employer)

$3,000
Dennis Wesley Co. (apparently part of property holding companies connected to Mike Coyle; the total includes $1,000 from Coyle Chevrolet)

$3,150
William E. Hall (United Consulting; no-bid consulting engineers)*

$3,650
DF Development (Denton Floyd; M. Fine/Mansions on Main, and more recently the Reisz Mahal "extreme special contractor treatment" city hall project)

$3,650
Lemor Dowell (Democratic Party financier and grandee, includes $650 from his company New Albany Heating & Air Conditioning) *

---

$4,000 
Beam Longest & Neff LLC ("consulting engineers and land surveyors" and recurring recipients of no-bid contracts) *

$4,000 
Bennett's Towing and Recovery (extended information here; now we know why the tow trucks are allowed to drive so recklessly) *

---

$5,000 
Fagre Baker Daniels LLP (no-bid legal firm) *

$5,000 
John Neace (former insurance mogul, now building a Southern Indiana wheeling and dealing empire via Neace Ventures) *

$5,000 
Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 502 (a rare, huge union tithe, and the first from Local 502 since 2013)

$5,500
Terry Baker (HWC Engineering -- see Jolliffe -- and CRS Marketing) *

$5,500
Ed Jolliffe (HWC Engineering, a "full service consulting engineering firm" and frequent no-bid contract recipient) *

$5,650 
Stephen Triplett (total includes a $650 donation from AllTerrain Paving; this is to be regarded as a Neace investment) *

$7,500
Ohio Valley Properties of Kentuckiana (it's a Jorge Lanz company, and why not? Lanz is one of Gahan's best and most enduring big-money friends) +

$9,000 
Clark Dietz (CD) PAC (no-bid engineering contractors; with a narrow lead over Jacobi Toombs & Lanz and HWC Engineering, they're Gahan's biggest all-time donor)

$27,000
Indiana Democratic Party (its first ever reported donation to Gahan in two massive installments, both coming in October) * +

In 2019, these 30 contributors have accounted for $131,550 out of the approximately $147,000 raised by Slick Jeffie.

Looking at these 30 donors with an liberal view of residency, perhaps 7 or 8 of them (but no more) reside or do primary business in New Albany.