Keep Throwing Pebbles

Jerry’s Work Continues

This post provides a brief update before the next article is published.

Our friend Jerry LeClaire died on April 7 after a long fight with cancer. I have been told that some of you may have missed Jerry’s final post, published on the morning of his passing. Over 5,000 readers viewed the post, and over 140 people responded with words of friendship, remembrance and sorrow. It is certainly worth reading if you missed it.

Going forward, you may notice a slight change to the name of this Substack. This is his legacy, and it will always carry his name.

Late last year, Jerry told me one of his biggest regrets was that he would not live to see a Democrat defeat Baumgartner in November.

As we began to research our next stories, we became aware of a dark money operation, initiated from outside the district that had recruited a candidate whose campaign appeared designed to function as a spoiler, fracturing support for the strongest Democratic challenger in WA-5 and returning a weakened Republican incumbent to office.

Since December, Jerry and I had been building that story. We considered publishing in January, but Jerry’s instincts were right. He believed that the April 15 FEC filings would confirm what we were seeing. They do.

The reporting traces how money moves through dark money PACs, consultants, shell companies, and family businesses. The research and the documents we uncovered expose a pattern of deception, candidate exploitation, and personal enrichment that reaches from Nebraska into Eastern Washington.

That article will be published Tuesday morning. It is the last story Jerry and I worked on together.

Keep throwing pebbles!