Whether Mitch McConnell’s Republican challenger in the Kentucky Senate race is responsible for any of his company’s past tax delinquency — or is just the victim of a misleading smear campaign from a ruthless opponent — depends on which side you ask.
“Matt Bevin says he’s a conservative businessman,” a McConnell campaign ad released last week stated. “But when his Connecticut businesses needed help, Bevin took $200,000 in taxpayer bailouts, even though Bevin failed to pay taxes.”
Bevin announced his candidacy last week. McConnell’s campaign immediately launched an attack dubbing him “Bailout Bevin” and criticizing him for taking a government grant to rebuild his company’s factory after a devastating fire in 2012.
What’s up for debate is whether Bevin was responsible at any point when his Connecticut company, Bevin Bell, was hit for back taxes, or whether he merely inherited these problems.
Michael Maniscalco, the town manager of East Hampton, Conn. where the family business is located, has come to Bevin’s defense.
“These delinquent taxes were prior to Mr. Bevin having an ownership interest in the company,” Maniscalco wrote in a letter provided to The Daily Caller.
“It is our understanding that Mr. Bevin took ownership of Bevin Bell in August 2011,” the town official added. “At that time the company owed the Town in excess of $180,000 in back taxes. By April 2012, delinquent taxes for the Grand Lists of 2005-2010 were paid in full.”
But here’s Bevin’s problem: Records indicate the company was delinquent on its taxes from 2005 to 2010. While Bevin didn’t become an owner until 2011, news reports widely referred to him as the president or leader of the company starting in 2008.
The question McConnell’s campaign is asking is how he can be president of a company, but not be responsible for any tax delinquencies during that time.
Bevin’s campaign counters that despite the news reports to the contrary, he was not the formal leader of the company until 2011. They provided an August 2011 document showing that his relative, Stanley R. Bevin, resigned and he took over that month.
In addition, the campaign says it’s misleading to blame Bevin for the company’s misfortunes because the tax delinquencies were the result of decisions made before he started helping the company in 2008, when it was was on the verge of bankruptcy. The problems started long before his involvement, the campaign argues, and it took several years and much of Bevin’s personal money to turn the company around.
“To me, it’s really a positive story,” Bevin adviser Nachama Soloveichik told TheDC. “Here he was saving jobs, saving a historic manufacturing company in America, trying to turn around a company. And he did.”
McConnell’s campaign admitted to The Daily Caller that it’s true Bevin inherited some tax delinquencies when he took over the business in 2008. But they say their ad only references the eight specific liens that were levied against the company starting in 2009, after Bevin became involved with the company.
In a phone interview last week before announcing his candidacy, Bevin defended his business practices and slammed McConnell for his history of voting for bailouts, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
“The reality is McConnell is bringing this issue up as a distraction,” he told TheDC. “It’s a smoke screen for the fact that he is a liberal, big-government bailout guy. He’s the king of the bailouts. And it’s ironic that the master of the bailouts would try to distract people with this nonsense.”
What hurts Bevin’s case that he isn’t a tax delinquent is that his tax problems have extended to his personal life too, though he marks that up to a mistake.
“Bevin was hit with a $6,200 tax lien in May 2008 for failing to pay taxes on a Maine vacation home, according to public documents,” Politico reports. “When he learned of the problem, Bevin immediately paid off the back taxes, an adviser said, who added the problem was caused by a mix up with the bank.”