Brett Blackledge recently reported that Tim Turnham claims to have given Alabama School Board member Mary Jane Caylor $7,500 in her failed bid to become mayor of Huntsville in 2004.  Turnham leveled the claim as he pled guilty to overcharging the state’s two year college system for work and then kicking back money to former chancellor Roy Johnson as well as Johnson’s family and friends.

Turnham, 57, told prosecutors he gave $7,500 to a political action committee, which then gave him checks written to Caylor’s campaign. Turnham said he gave the checks to Johnson so he could deliver them to Caylor, the plea agreement states.

“This is just not true,” Caylor said in an interview Tuesday. “Roy never delivered anything to me. Roy never gave me anything. And I never asked him to give me anything.”

I did a little digging and found some substantiation to Turnham’s claim.  On 6/11/2004 a PAC named “JAM PAC FUND” received a $5,000 contribution from Alabama Contract Sales.  Three days later on 6/14/2004 that PAC made an expenditure of $7,500 to Mary Jane Caylor’s mayoral campaign.  That very day Mary Jane Caylor’s mayoral campaign finance documents show that she received a contribution of $7,500 from JAM PAC FUND.

The only notable discrepancy between the campaign finance numbers and Turnham’s claim is the amount of the ACS contribution.  However, in the murky world of PAC to PAC transfers in our state it is nearly impossible to prove that ACS did not funnel money to JAM PAC via other channels.  The man who runs JAM PAC, Jeff Martin, manages a total of 21 PACS in our state.  Sixteen of his PACs have the descriptive names One PAC, Two PAC, Three PAC, … and Sixteen PAC.  Martin’s PACs frequently change money among themselves and some of the state’s other big time money laundering PAC outfits.

The timing of the ACS contribution and the subsequent expenditure lends credence to Turnham’s claim.  It certainly seems as if his deposit was hard wired for Caylor.

One important part of Turnham’s claim is that the check from JAM PAC was hand delivered to Caylor.  The expenditure from JAM PAC and the receipt of that expenditure happened on the same day.  Clearly the check wasn’t mailed to Caylor.  Unless the money was electronically transferred (no way of telling) then it had to be hand delivered.

This all begs the question: Why would Tim Turnham, who lives in Auburn, contribute $7,500 to the campaign of a person running for mayor of a city in north Alabama?  If that person sat on the Alabama School Board that oversees the taxpayer funded organization that you have been stealing from for years you might have a plausible reason: payback.

We’ll see what else U.S. Attorney Alice Martin and Brett Blackledge dig up on Mary Jane Caylor, but her credibility seems pretty low right now.

UPDATE (6/13/2007): I just found the other $2,500 in contributions from ACS.  On 6/9/04 a contribution of $2,500 was made from ACS to KAK PAC, which is one of Jeff Martin’s other PACs.  All the dots have been connected and it appears that Turnham’s story holds water.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 5:06 am and is filed under Alabama, Ethics Scandals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.