Say Anything

Rick Berg is pushing back in a big way to a radio ad put out by Heidi Heitkamp accusing him of unsavory business practices for being associated with Goldmark Property Management. According to a press conference and press release today, Berg is saying he ended his relationship with Midwest Management Company in 1987, and it wasn’t until 1994 that the company began calling itself Goldmark Property Management.

But GPM does share a mailing address, and an office building, with the company Berg does acknowledge as his employer, Goldmark-Schlossman Commercial Real Estate.

Also, in 2000 Berg apparently made a contribution to Al Carlson’s US Senate campaign from a Goldmark post office box and listed Goldmark Property Management as his employer:

In 2001 the Grand Forks Herald described Berg as a “partner in all the Goldmark companies.”

In December of 2003, in an Associated Press account of about drug busts at Fargo-area apartments, Rick Berg was quoted as a spokesman for Goldmark Property Management:

It still could be true that Berg’s affiliation with this company is all in the past (the examples Democrats are bringing up are all from a long time ago), and I think think it’s true that Berg legitimately has nothing to do with the current management of Goldmark Property Management, but these data points clearly aren’t consistent with the timeline Berg gave earlier today. Are they both just errors, related to the misconception about GPM and Goldmark-Schlossman being the same entity?

That’s going to be a hard sell given that Berg said today he had “no involvement” in the company (audio here).

I’ve contacted the Berg campaign, and they’re getting back to me, but either Berg wasn’t correct anyone when they wrongly associated him with GPM instead of Goldmark Schlossman or the timeline he sent out in his press release earlier today is flat-out inaccurate.

Update: I just spoke with the campaign, and their problem with Heitkamp’s campaign is that she doesn’t substantiate with any information that Berg was in any sort of a management capacity for Goldmark Property Management beyond 1987.

They sort of have a point. The FEC reports listed above aren’t filled out by Rick Berg. They’re filled out by the campaigns, so there it is believable that there could have been a mix-up in filling those out by the campaign and not Berg. The media reports are a little harder to dismiss, but they’re still not conclusive proof that Berg is the one calling the shots at GPM.

Berg is not a shareholder of GPM. Berg is not an employee of GPM. Thus, when Heitkamp describes GPM as “Rick Berg’s company,” where’s the proof?