OGDEN — Three Ogden City Council members seeking reelection to their posts — Marcia White, Bart Blair and Ken Richey — have returned donations from a new Layton-based political action committee largely funded by an out-of-state businessman and pastor.
Unfamiliarity with the organization spurred the action, coming as campaigning ahead of Election Day, next Tuesday, enters the final stretch.
Blair and White had been under the impression the donations they ultimately received for $500 each from an entity called the Taxpayer PAC were to have come from an organization affiliated with the Republican Party. Richey initially received $400.
“Then when I found out it wasn’t, I just thought, ‘I don’t know this, I don’t know anything about it,'” said Blair, facing a challenge for his at-large seat from Kevin Lundell. “It wasn’t worth it to be tied or connected to anybody that I didn’t really know too much about.”
White, facing a challenge for her at-large seat from Alicia Washington, offered tougher words. “I have now returned the check and rejected it and just said, ‘I do not believe in your organization or anything it stands for,'” White said.
A fourth City Council hopeful, meantime — associated with the key financial backer behind the political action committee, David Reece, of Phoenix, Arizona — is defending the group, though he had to return the bulk of the money it gave him. Taxpayer PAC, said Jase Reyneveld, aims to “support and reward candidates that were committed to limited government and lowering taxes wherever possible,” he said.
Reyneveld and Flor Lopez are vying for the District 1 City Council seat, now held by Angela Choberka, who isn’t seeking reelection.
Reyneveld received $14,200 in all in three separate donations from Taxpayer PAC but had to return all but $1,500 of it to comply with city election rules. The contributions, itemized in campaign finance reports due last Tuesday, Oct. 28, were focus of a critical report in Utah Political Watch, which drew the attention of White, Blair and Richey and seemed to spark their concern. Reyneveld, though, said the excessive donation stemmed from unfamiliarity with the applicable rules, not an underhanded bid to skirt election law.
City election rules limit donations to council candidates to $1,500 per contributor, a ceiling that applies to individuals, businesses and organizations, according to Ogden City Clerk Tracy Hansen. Reyneveld, however, had thought state rules — which his campaign manager told him don’t limit political action committee donations — applied. Whatever the case, when informed of the rule by Hansen, he said he returned the overage, $12,700, to stay within campaign rules.
White, Blair and Richey, for their part, harboring questions about what Taxpayer PAC is and who’s behind it, opted to take another route. They returned the entirety of their much-smaller donations, dated Oct. 23 in finance reports published by the state online. “I just felt like I’d rather just return that contribution and just basically make my own contribution to make up the difference,” Richey said.
While the Weber County Republican Party donated $1,600 to Taxpayer PAC on Oct. 23, the main donor to the political group, formed last July, has been Reece. He donated $15,000 to the group last September. Taxpayer PAC reps didn’t respond to a KSL.com query seeking comment, but Reyneveld, who partners with Reece in business ventures, said the group’s mission is to promote lower taxes and limited government. Expanding educational voucher programs is another focus.
Reece is pastor of a conservative church in Phoenix, Puritan Reformed Church, that touts the Old and New Testaments as “the rationally coherent and infallible word of God, the very truth itself and the only rule for faith and life,” according to its website. Religious considerations, though, don’t underlie Taxpayer PAC.
“There’s no religious aspect of the (group), and we would donate to (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints members), we would donate to Christians, we would donate to nonreligious people if they agreed to wanting to lower taxes or be more judicious with taxpayer money,” Reyneveld said.
Reyneveld spoke along with Reece in an April 25 podcast hosted by Dan Berkholder, pastor of Refuge Church in Ogden. The topic was “why building Christian businesses is crucial for shaping the New Christendom,” according to a social media post containing the podcast.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
