Virginia Stapleton caught lying about opponent Kevin Mannix

Pro-payroll tax Salem City Councilor turned candidate for State Representative, Virginia Stapleton, has been caught lying about her opponent, Kevin Mannix.

A mailer that was sent to voters and paid for by Stapleton’s campaign claimed Mannix “put at least two former sex offenders back on the streets,” referencing a Portland Tribune article from 2010, when Mannix was the chief petitioner on Measure 73. The measure–later passed overwhelmingly by Oregon voters–increased minimum sentences for repeat sexual predators. While Stapleton’s mailer would have you believe that Mannix hired these sex offenders to collect signatures for the ballot measure, an investigation shows that an independent company supporting the efforts of Mannix’s ballot measure mistakenly hired criminals who were on parole and later fired them. Mannix had nothing to do with the hiring at all.

The mailer also contained a fake headline from a 2002 Oregonian story that leads one to believe the newspaper condemned Mannix for voting for a bill that supported pedophiles. An investigation of that story shows that the quote was a debunked political attack from Ted Kulungoski, Mannix’s rival in the 2002 campaign for Oregon governor that featured the two.

The two claims made by Virginia Stapleton’s mailer are false, and attempt to deceive voters about Kevin Mannix’s record.

Virginia Stapleton announced her campaign for State Representative, HD 21, soon after 82% of Salem voters rejected the $500+/year payroll tax on Salem workers last November. According to media reports, Stapleton was the “architect” of the failed tax and even voted to try to prevent the voters from having a say on the tax. Her tax would have also cost Keizer residents who work in Salem–and live in the House district she is seeking to represent–over $3.2 million per year. When Stapleton announced for HD 21 she promised to focus on raising property taxes as well.

Article by Josie Alexander