January 19, 2007 -- 1:49 PM EST // //
MORE EVIDENCE THAT JOHN SOLOMON'S STORY ON JOHN EDWARDS' HOUSE SALE IS QUESTIONABLE.
Over at TPM Josh has flagged a questionable Washington Post story by John Solomon that tries to suggest that there was something untoward about John Edwards' sale of his Georgetown home last month.
Now I've got some more evidence showing that the story may be more questionable than it first appeared. It turns out that one key player in the story doesn't have any problem with what Edwards did, and what's more, it appears that Solomon may not have even contacted this key player at all before publishing.
One of the key points Solomon makes in his story is that the sale should raise eyebrows because the people who bought Edwards' home are at legal loggerheads with two unions whose support Edwards is trying to secure for his Presidential bid. The buyers, the story reports, are Paul and Terry Klaassen, the "wealthy founders of the nation's largest assisted-living housing chain for seniors."
Of these buyers, Solomon writes:
They are also the focus of legal complaints by some of the same labor unions whose support Edwards has been assiduously courting for his presidential bid.
The story points to two unions who are fighting with the couple over money their pension funds lost investing in the couple's company: the Service Employees International Union, and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
So do these unions have a problem with Edwards' sale? An official at the first union -- SEIU -- is quoted by Solomon way at the end of the story saying he couldn't comment on Edwards' action. According to the story, this union official said "he was unaware of the Edwards home deal and would reserve judgment on it." No official from the second union, the UFCW, is quoted.
Well, I've just gotten in touch with an official from that second union, and guess what: The official told me that UFCW doesn't see anything whatsoever wrong with what Edwards did. What's more, the official said that Solomon didn't even contact the union at all for comment on the story.
The official is Jill Cashen, a spokesperson for the UFCW. "John Solomon from the Washington Post did not contact us about his story about the sale of Edwards' home in Georgetown," Cashen told me. Nor was the person who oversees the union's pension funds -- which are at the center of the battle between the union and the couple -- ever contacted by Solomon, Cashen added.
What does the union -- which endorsed Kerry-Edwards in 2004 but didn't back Edwards in the primary -- think of what Edwards did? "Our position is that if someone has their house on the market, and they sell it to someone who wants to buy it, we don't believe that's really a relevant story," Cashen said. "He has every right to sell his house on the free market to whomever can afford it."
When I asked her if Edwards should really be doing business with a company at loggerheads with the union whose support he wants, Cashen said: "He sold his home to them. It isn't like he's creating an ongoing business relationship with them."
I think this is pretty surprising. In his story Solomon is using the fact that these unions are at odds with the buyer of Edwards' home in order to suggest that there was something untoward about what Edwards did. Yet he didn't even contact one of the unions to see if they had a problem with the sale. That's striking.
What's more, we now know officially that the union doesn't have a problem with it at all. So will Solomon do a follow-up story on this fact tomorrow?
This latest Solomon effort is even more striking when you consider Solomon's questionable history of going after Dems -- which is detailed at length here at TPMmuckraker -- not to mention the fact that now one of his Post colleagues has revealed that he thinks today's Edwards story is thin at best.
I've just emailed Solomon for comment. No word back yet.
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