ICYMI: Kim Olson’s Dodgy Departure from the Military Emerges as Big Vulnerability in Texas Congressional Race
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 24th, 2020
Contact: Jazmin Vargas
jazmin@chcboldpac.com
This week, the
Texas Tribune
published an article highlighting growing concerns in Texas about Kim Olson’s ability to flip Texas’ 24th Congressional District, given her
dubious military record
and the circumstances surrounding her departure from the military. Republicans are now
primed
to make Olson's corruption allegations during her time in the military a top issue for voters in the general election.
According to the
Tribune, while on active duty as one of the most powerful figures in Iraq “ ...Olson established a U.S. outpost of the South Africans’ security firm, Meteoric, and allegedly made herself the director. Within months, the Pentagon caught wind of the arrangement and conducted an investigation that accused her of improperly helping Meteoric win lucrative government contracts.”
Also in the article, Common Defense, a progressive veterans group that has backed Olson’s opponent, Democrat Candace Valenzuela lays out their support of Valenzuela. "As veterans, we support elected officials who will fight for us, not themselves. We won’t give someone a rubber stamp just because they’re a fellow veteran, we vote for the candidate who represents the same values of integrity and character we hold dear. The person in this race who represents those values is Candace Valenzuela,” explained Common Defense's political director, Alexander McCoy.
In case you missed it…
Kim Olson’s departure from the Air Force hasn’t been a political liability. Will that change in 2020?
Patrick Svitek
In Kim Olson's still relatively young political career, her opponents have mostly steered clear of making a major issue out of the contracting scandal that led to her retirement from the Air Force in 2005.
Texas' swashbuckling agriculture commissioner,
Sid Miller, barely brought it up when she ran a surprisingly close race against him in 2018.
This year, she advanced in the first round of a crowded, mostly cordial Democratic U.S. House primary that saw little airing of the scandal. Her runoff opponent, Candace Valenzuela, hasn't brought it up yet.
However, as she approaches the July runoff, Olson is poised to potentially confront the issue in a way that she has not had to before. Some Valenzuela supporters are starting to go public with concerns about her military career — and whether it would be too much of a general-election liability in a district that national Democrats are hoping to flip.
All the while, national Republicans have kept up a drumbeat suggesting that hounding her as a "war profiteer" would be central to their November playbook in the district. She rejects that term, calling it plainly inaccurate, but acknowledges the attacks are not going away anytime soon — and argues that she is well-prepared to fend them off.
[...]
Olson's case came to light in a 2006
Los Angeles Times story, and she discusses it at length in a memoir she published later that year, “Iraq and Back: Inside the War to Win the Peace.” During her 2018 bid for agriculture commissioner, it came up mainly in the form of an
Austin American-Statesman story.
The issue dates back to Olson’s time in Iraq in the early 2000s, when she served as the No. 2 to Gen. Jay Garner as he led the American rebuilding effort there. Instead of providing Garner's team with military protection, the Department of Defense hired a group of South African bodyguards that Garner and Olson later said they came to greatly appreciate. When Garner was replaced several months later, he said he asked Olson to find a way to make sure the South Africans got paid for their work.
Along the way, Olson established a U.S. outpost of the South Africans' security firm, Meteoric, and allegedly made herself the director. Within months, the Pentagon caught wind of the arrangement and conducted an investigation that accused her of improperly helping Meteoric win lucrative government contracts.
Olson denied the allegations and said she never personally profited from the Meteoric contracts. She eventually received a nonjudicial punishment known as an Article 15. She agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges, including creating the appearance of a conflict of interest, and received a formal reprimand and $3,500 fine. She was permitted to retire with an honorable discharge and no reduction in rank.
[...]
Democrats, both those who have taken sides in the runoff and those who have not, are keeping an eye on how Olson navigates the re-emergence of the issue.
"There’s no question that the problem she had ... is a bump in the road politically and she’s got to get over that without losing a wheel," said Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist who runs the Lone Star Project, which has not endorsed in the race. "Nobody should think that it’s just a non-issue."
[...]
Olson and Valenzuela are competing for their party's nomination to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell. The seat is among seven this cycle in Texas that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is aiming to flip. Beth Van Duyne, the former U.S. housing official and Irving mayor, has already secured the Republican nomination for the seat.
That could be the difference between this cycle and Olson's 2018 race against Miller. Two years ago, she was the clear underdog. Now Olson is running in a national battleground that could easily draw over $1 million in attack ad spending once the general election is set.
"Our polling data always showed that Commissioner Miller enjoyed a comfortable lead in the race and therefore we saw no need to spend campaign dollars on paid media on this issue," Miller's political consultant, Todd Smith, wrote in an email. "We were hopeful that the mainstream media would find her military record as disturbing as we did and would do their jobs in bringing this matter to light."
[...]
Valenzuela's campaign had no comment for this story. But one of her recent endorsers in the runoff, a progressive veterans group called Common Defense, is sounding the alarm about Olson, saying she "used her position of power in the military to steer $3 million to South African bodyguards, then went into business with them." Olson's supporters say that claim was not substantiated by the Pentagon investigation.
Common Defense's political director, Alexander McCoy, said in a statement: "As veterans, we support elected officials who will fight for us, not themselves. We won’t give someone a rubber stamp just because they’re a fellow veteran, we vote for the candidate who represents the same values of integrity and character we hold dear. The person in this race who represents those values is Candace Valenzuela."
McCoy was harsher in an interview, saying Olson "displayed incredibly poor judgment" in Iraq as well as a "selfishness and lack of integrity."
[...]
While the intraparty criticism of Olson may be limited so far, Republicans have hammered the line of attack since Olson's campaign began. Hours after she launched her campaign last year, the National Republican Congressional Committee welcomed her to the race with a statement invoking the contracting controversy.
"If Democrats are foolish enough to nominate disgraced war profiteer Kim Olson, she’ll be rejected in November as Texans learn more about the criminal enterprise she ran at the expense of our troops in Iraq," NRCC spokesman Bob Salera said in a statement for this story.
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