September 08, 2006 11:30 PM UTC

Rick O'Donnell Burned on California Insurance Claim

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Everybody who’s worked on a campaign knows if you get information that sounds incredible but hasn’t already made the papers, it’s best to check it and re-check it to make sure it’s true.

Unless said campaign doesn’t care if it’s true, counting on the news break to get more attention than the inevitable retraction.

Congressional candidate Rick O’Donnell’s staff apparently managed neither this week, as the Denver Post reports:

Republican congressional candidate Rick O’Donnell was wrong when he claimed his opponent had represented an insurance firm at the expense of that firm’s “elderly and disabled policyholders,” officials confirmed Thursday.

Ed Perlmutter, Democratic candidate for Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, actually helped recover money in 1991 for the policyholders of Los Angeles-based Executive Life Insurance Co. and preserved assets once the firm was placed into conservatorship, officials with the California insurance commissioner’s office said Thursday.

“He was doing his legal work on behalf of getting value for the policyholders, and he was doing that work on behalf of the California insurance commissioner,” said Norman Williams, a spokesman for the commissioner.

According to the Post, the O’Donnell campaign won’t be apologizing, saying they merely asked opponent Ed Perlmutter to “explain his role” in the case.

But that’s not what O’Donnell’s press release from Wednesday says:

Court documents reveal that Ed Perlmutter profited from the collapse of scandal-ridden Executive Life Insurance Company.iii The collapse of Executive Life Insurance was one of the largest insurance industry scandals in history. The collapse triggered criminal and civil lawsuits across the country, state and federal investigations, and audits involving billions of dollars.

“In the wake of seniors and the disabled having their financial security ripped away from them, Ed Perlmutter represented the company responsible,” said O’Donnell campaign manager K.C. Jones. “For weeks Ed has refused to tell the voters who his clients are. Now we know why. If Executive Life is any indication, Ed’s clients are some of the most unsavory folks in America who hurt hundreds of thousands of people while Ed profited, pocketing his lawyer’s fees.”

Many of Executive Life’s elderly and disabled policyholders relied on annuity payments as a primary means of financial support. In addition, many policyholders were counting on annuity payments to provide for their severely disabled children’s medical care, even after they were gone…

Which sounds devastating, except that Perlmutter by all accounts was involved to help those elderly and disabled people get their money.

Like we said originally, you either examine this stuff thoroughly before you click ‘send’ or you calculate that the initial damage is worth more than the cost of it being disproven. This one tallies up with Perlmutter looking like a saint, and the O’Donnell camp looking like amateurs who don’t check their facts.