Come thou Fount of smears distressing (part 2)

Michelle reports that the smears have already begun against Chris Medlock in the House District 69 race, and Fred Jordan is not only calling Medlock a liar, he's impugning the honesty of fellow Tulsa blogger Steven Roemerman:

I got my mail at about 1:30 today and in it there was a mailer from Chris Medlock. It had a picture on it of six Mexican men who appear to be illegals sitting in front of a "Caprock" home. Caprock is owned at least partially by Mr. Fred Jordan, who is running against Mr. Medlock for State House. At almost 3:30, I got a prerecorded phone call from Mr. Jordan claiming this photo was a fauxto. He said it was a fake. Well, so sorry, Mr. Jordan, but it isn’t fake, and I first saw the picture several days ago. It was taken by an honest citizen.

Steve Roemerman has posted the entire sequence of 14 photos that he shot as he drove past this home in south Jenks which is being built by Caprock, Fred Jordan's homebuilding company. Although there were no doubt some contrast adjustments and cropping done for the sake of presenting a clear image on the printed material, every key element in the picture -- the workers, the house under construction, and the Caprock sign -- appear in several if not all of the photos, taken as Steve drove past the house.

Here's what Jordan said in his recorded phone call:

In fact, I am amazed that my opponent has sent you a doctored and false picture showing Hispanics hired by a company that I have absolutely no ownership in.

Jordan gives a very lawyerly, nay, Clintonian response. You could take that sentence a couple of different ways.

Possibility 1: Jordan is claiming that he has no ownership in Caprock. I don't know the financial arrangement he has with Kevin Jordan or the other partners in the company, but the phone number on the sign in the photo is identical to the phone number on his campaign's page on okinsider.com.

Possibility 2: Jordan is really saying that the workers in the photo were hired by a subcontractor, a company he hired to do part of the work on the house. The implication is that he can't be considered responsible for these workers if they are illegal.

This is the defense that was often employed by a fictional man in uniform, Sgt. Hans Schultz of Luftstalag 13: "I see no-THING! I know no-THING!" While Jordan may be able to truthfully say that he doesn't have ownership in the subcontractor, that doesn't absolve him of ethical responsibility for whether his subcontractors' employees are legally allowed to work in the United States.

If a general contractor like Fred Jordan simply takes the low bidder everytime he invites bids on part of a homebuilding job (e.g., bricklaying, framing, roofing, landscaping) without ensuring that the low bidder is only hiring legal labor, he gives an insurmountable advantage to subcontractors who break the law. That willful ignorance on the part of the general contractor puts law-abiding subcontractors out of business.

In a May 1, 2006, Tulsa Whirled story, Randy Sissom, who owns a bricklaying business, talked about his struggles trying to operate as a subcontractor who plays by the rules:

Hargrove said when he bids a brick job he can't compete with the price of an all-immigrant crew. Sissom faces the same problem. He usually charges builders about $245 per thousand bricks installed. Immigrant competitors charge about $200 per thousand, he said. Sissom says immigrants, mainly from Mexico, stop by his job site almost on a daily basis looking for work. "They say, 'You pay cash?' " he said.

When they find out he takes out money from their checks to pay taxes they often lose interest, he said. But if they still want the job, Sissom says he makes a copy of any documentation they provide like a Green Card and Social Security card.

Guys like Sissom suffer when general contractors like Jordan turn a blind eye to their subcontractors' illegal hiring practices. A law that fines general contractors for indirectly employing illegal workers would help level the playing field for law-abiding subcontractors. Do you think that, as a state rep, homebuilder Fred Jordan would vote for a law like that? Do you think the developers who have financed his campaign would want him to vote for such a law?

(The title of this post relates to this earlier one, about the misleading last minute tactics used against District Attorney Tim Harris by political consultant Fount Holland, who is the consultant for the Fred Jordan campaign.)