26th Congressional Distict candidate Powers releases War Kids documents
Davis’ allegations called ‘patently false’
WASHINGTON — Congressional candidate Jon Powers released documents Wednesday showing that he earned $15,000 from his Iraq children’s charity in the first five months of 2007 — a year in which the organization raised only $41,738.
But the Powers campaign also released a letter from Veterans for America, the huge veterans organization where Powers worked, showing that the $60,000 he earned in 2006 was tied to his job as vice president for policy for that organization, as well as the War Kids Relief effort he ran there.
“Our opponents keep trying to frame it as if Jon was trying to rob War Kids blind, and it’s patently false,” said John Gerken, Powers’ campaign manager. “The claim that he took $77,000 from War Kids is patently false.”
Nevertheless, the campaign of industrialist Jack Davis — another of the three Democrats vying to replace Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, RClarence — continued to trash Powers over his War Kids effort.
“Jon Powers has been running for Congress for over a year, marketing a success that
doesn’t exist,” said Paul Rivera, a Davis campaign consultant who noted that in 2007, “Jon Powers paid himself more than a third of the revenues” of War Kids Relief.
The documents — forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service last week, as well as the letter to Powers from Veterans for America — do shed further light on a charitable effort that failed to thrive.
War Kids Relief raised $135,074 during the course of its existence, less than the $150,000 to $250,000 Powers previously said it raised and far less than the $7 million that he hoped to put together.
The War Kids effort, which Powers started as a Veterans for America project in 2005, was spun off as an independent charity in early 2007, a few months before Powers announced his race for the Democratic nomination to replace Reynolds.
The War Kids effort raised $68,336 while under the helm of Veterans for America, wrote Anita Keller, director of humanitarian affairs at Veterans for America, in her letter to Powers.
Approximately 80 percent of that, or about $54,669, went to programs to design a model for child care for children abandoned as a result of the Iraq War, as well as a work study program, a youth conference and research, the letter said.
That left approximately $13,667 for overhead. Gerken said overhead would have included office space and support costs for the War Kids effort, as well as the portion of Powers’ Veterans for America salary connected to it.
That would mean the bulk of the $60,000 Powers earned from Veterans for America was in connection with his job as vice president for policy. The Powers campaign said he took that title in May 2006 and testified at government hearings, worked on legislation and served as a spokesman for the charity. Officials at Veterans for America could not be reached to comment further on Powers’ duties there.
Veterans for America spun off the War Kids effort as a separate entity in early 2007, and Powers’ $15,000 in pay from the organization was for his work there up until he left in late May of that year to start his run for Congress. War Kids Relief was later reorganized under a Minnesota charity called Children’s Cultural Connection.
While the campaign of Alice Kryzan, the third candidate for Democratic nomination in the 26th Congressional District, offered no comment on War Kids Relief, Rivera, of the Davis campaign, was more than happy to comment.
“Jon Powers has never accepted responsibility for what’s clearly a failure,” he said.
But in a statement, the Powers campaign offered a different take on events, alluding to the fact that the charity never got the federal funding it had hoped to receive.
