Yesterday, two right-leaning North Dakota TV companies -- KFYR in Bismarck and KVLY in Fargo -- all of which are owned by "Hoak Media Corporation" of Texas, gave to Rick Berg something that I believe was an inappropriate, in-kind campaign contribution. How did they do it? They handed Berg a bogus campaign issue, by pulling advertisements produced by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) because they were (allegedly) false and misleading, when they were, in fact, neither. Berg and his surrogates spent the whole day yesterday blasting out press releases and Tweets, falsely asserting Heitkamp and/or the DSCC were engaging in false advertising.  

Look for Rick Berg to use the fact Hoak pulled the ads in as many fiction-filled campaign ads in the upcoming four weeks.  

What am I talking about?  

Let's walk through this.

First, the DSCC had an ad produced.  Here's what the "revised" ad looks like, after one minor change has been made:

According to a press release from the DSCC, there has been exactly one change made to the ad.  Here's how they describe it:

This sentence:

The company was even listed as Berg's employer on his real estate license and on federal forms.

Has now been changed to this:

The company was even on Berg's real estate license and was listed as his employer on federal forms.

I admit: I had to read these several times, and look at the license itself, before I figured out what was going on here.  Before seeing the license itself, what I thought I had figured out was that Berg Goldmark was not -- in fact -- listed as Berg's "employer" on the real estate license; he must have been listed as an "independent contractor" or "affiliate" or something like that.  Then I saw the license:

See that?  The license shows Berg was "associated with" "Goldmark Property Management, Inc."  It doesn't say Goldmark Property Management, Inc. (GPMI) was his employer. So then I was convinced that Berg must have written on his license application form that he was an independent contractor, or affiliate or somehow otherwise "associated with" GPMI.  But Berg must be whining that he had not ever said he had an employer/employee relationship with GPMI.

But then I found out Goldmark has created a new website -- what I'd characterize as being "another in-kind campaign contribution to Rick Berg" -- to try to help Berg distance himself from the questionable, low-rated-by-the-better-business-bureau company.  Here's what they put on their pro-Berg website:

(Source:  www.goldmarkis.com)

See that?  Goldmark's own website acknowledges that it "is true" that "Rick Berg signed an application in December of 1994 for his real estate license listing GOLDMARK Property Management, Inc., as his employer."

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NERD SIDEBAR:  Before I go too much further, I should outline, briefly, what I know about "www.goldmarkis.com"  WWW.GOLDMARKIS.COM is a brand-new, poorly designed website, hosted on Goldmark's web server.  How do I know this?  I'll walk you through it fairly quickly.

First, open up a "command prompt" on your computer.  That's the old DOS C:\ prompt.  Plug in these words, minus the quotation marks:  "PING www.goldmarkis.com".  What you should get is this:

Now... See the series of numbers?  It's "65.183.254.156" and that's the IP address of the web server that hosts the WWW.GOLDMARKIS.COM website.

Okay.  So, now that we know that, we can plug the same IP address into a "WHOIS" site.  I like "domaintools.com".  Here's the address I'd use:  http://whois.domaintools.com/65.183.254.156.  When I plug that address into my browser, here's what I get:

That might be hard to read, so I'll just tell you what's important on there (or you can click on the link I put just above the graphic to see it on your browser, which seems to be working just fine):  It says the IP address 65.183.254.156 hosts one other website:  www.goldmark.com.  That's why I'm comfortable telling you it's Goldmark's web server.

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So now we have Goldmark itself telling us Rick Berg filled out a form saying Berg's employer was GPMI.  So even if he was not actually an employee of GPMI, he had filled out a form saying he was, and a license was issued saying he was "associated" with GPMI, which is to say that, although the license itself did not say he was an employee, the application form signed by Berg -- under penalty of perjury -- that caused the license to be published did, in fact, say Berg was an employee of GPMI.  And that's not me talking; it's Goldmark.  

So if everything in the DSCC ad was true, then why would Hoak Media pull the DSCC's ad yesterday?  

There seem (to me) to be only two possibilities:  either (a) the people at the Hoak stations were too stupid to figure out the things I've outlined above, or (b) Hoak Media's intention all along was to spoon-feed a phony, trumped-up sound-bite to Berg so he could use it in future advertising, and for Berg's surrogates to blast out, repeatedly, giving the (false) impression that the DSCC and/or Heitkamp had ever said something in an ad about Berg that wasn't true.  

I don't think the people in management at Hoak, KVLY and/or KFYR are stupid. (Not commenting here about their reporters.) So I think that only leaves option (b), above: that it was an in-kind campaign contribution to Berg, worth tens of thousands of dollars. They created -- from whole clothe -- a campaign issue for Berg.  That's worth a lot of money.

Now, let's see whether the Hoak gimme or the Goldmark pro-Berg website get reported by Berg as in-kind campaign contributions.  

Not holding my breathe...

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