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Jeff Davison responds to allegations his campaign is tied to third-party advertising

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CALGARY -

A Calgary city councillor and mayoral candidate had some impolite words Wednesday in response to allegations his campaign is coordinating with a third-party advertiser, in violation of election laws.

Email invites to a golf tournament were sent out earlier this month by a TPA called Calgary Tomorrow. It asked for individuals and companies to sign up for the event and pledge to sponsor the fundraiser. A $10,000 'Title Sponsor' package includes the opportunity to "ask Jeff Davison questions in Q&A at (the) event," while a $5,000 package includes breakfast with Davison on the day of the tournament.

According to the Local Authorities Election Act, campaigns are not allowed to accept money from corporations or unions. TPAs are allowed, the act states, but those groups are not allowed to coordinate with campaigns to accept corporate and union donations on their behalf.

At the bottom of the golf tournament invite, it states that the "Proceeds from the tournament will be used to conduct election advertising in support of Jeff Davison’s run for mayor."

An official complaint has been launched with Elections Alberta against Jeff Davison's team.

Davison, who represents Ward 6 and is running for mayor in the October civic vote, held a press conference, where he called the allegation, "bulls**t."

"Voters deserve campaign financing that is fair and transparent. For me, this has actually become very personal. I'm a husband, I'm a father of three, I've been in business 20 years, and I've been a city councillor for four," said Davison.

"To simply roll over and have some bulls**t claim made about my integrity and my ethics is unacceptable."

Davison said the complaint is "based on the actions of an overly-enthusiastic volunteer."

"We take this action obviously seriously, and have taken steps to ensure it won't happen again. My campaign has worked diligently to operate within the rules and we will continue to do so. We will work with Elections Alberta to make sure any complaint against this campaign is resolved immediately," he said.

"And I actually agree with the mayor's statement the other day, these elections rules are messy and overly complex. They're actually complex for no reason, I don't think anybody likes them. But the issue here is that Calgarians are concerned about dark money being used to impact the outcome of this election, and I get that and I agree and we need to ensure total transparency."

On Tuesday, Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who is not running for re-election, called the allegations, "extremely troubling."

Davison said third-party advertisers aren't new.

"We know right now that despite their protests, other campaigns are in discussions and are accepting the support of third-party advertisers," he said.

"Political opponents make baseless accusations when a candidate is gaining ground as a front-runner and that's nothing more than what's happening here. When public trust is already low, it's disappointing that campaigns play self-serving political games that undermine our very democracy."
 

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