Kansas Republicans looked this year to challenge most seats, with money and resources to boot, they felt as though even in blue areas of the state, a challenge by solid candidates could work out for them. With that in mind, it is a bit baffling that Wichita Republicans ended up with Jeremy Alessi.
Alessi, a failed businessman has found himself in the news repeatedly since the spring - and for all the wrong reasons.
It all started with responses to a voter guide prepared by the Wichita Eagle.
Alessi, a financial manager with the keen eye for value that put his property in foreclosure in Cook County, Illinois had a great idea for financial advice: Cut another $2.2B from Kansas Revenues. In case you're wondering, that $2.2B would result in a cut of 38% of the Kansas Budget. How would the state manage to make up the difference? Alessi offered no real ideas.
Today, however, Alessi ran into another bump in the road.
http://www.kansas.com/...
Since moving back to Kansas from the Chicago area five years ago, Jeremy Alessi, a Wichita candidate for state representative, had received an Illinois residents-only tax break on a condominium that remained on the rolls as his primary residence until last month, officials said.
The “homeowner exemption” on his former home in the Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn, Ill., had saved Alessi about $3,000 on his tax bills from 2010 through 2013, according to records obtained from the Cook County Assessor’s Office.
Alessi said he had been unintentionally receiving the homeowners exemption on property that he has been renting out. Cook County recently sent him a bill for back tax payments, which he said he has paid in full.
“It wasn’t something that I was willfully saying, ‘Please let me save on my taxes,’” he said. “Up until I got the bills in the mail, I was under the assumption we were current on the taxes.”
To qualify for the Illinois homeowners’ exemption, “the home must be owner-occupied and be your primary place of residence,” said Maura Kownacki of the Cook County Assessor’s Office.
Alessi said he had not known that the Illinois condo was still listed on the tax rolls as the family’s primary residence.
Alessi, who received the tax credit through 3 years for a property he acknowledges he was renting to make up the loss as he moved back to Kansas. The property, which underwent a long fight toward foreclosure, stayed in Alessi's hands and allowed him to continue to claim the tax benefits.
As a financial adviser, you generally try to show your clients the strength of your advice. Alessi, however contends that he was unaware of the tax benefits he was receiving year after year on a property he no longer lived in. Marketing yourself as a financial adviser unaware of the tax implications of property ownership normally isn't a path to success, so the question is: what kind of financial adviser is Jeremy Alessi?
Series 66 Uniform Combined State Law Examination State Securities Law Exam January 15, 2010 Failed
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Maybe we can't all succeed, but a financial adviser who needs two attempts to pass a multiple choice test where 75% gets you a pass may not be the kind you want to visit. Still, it is the kind of adviser you could expect would come up with a tax plan that makes 38% of the state budget disappear overnight, and is forced to fend off a property from foreclosure. Maybe, you just want a tax adviser that takes benefits without understanding he actually owes taxes.
While Cook County reports they are still waiting to be paid - I'm sure Jeremy sent the check in the mail, he spends his day working to become an elected house member.
The Republican plan was to elect someone who represented them - a fiscal conservative. Instead, they ended up with a candidate with a checkered past, who hangs out with those who may not be best for Kansas.
Who's that? Oh, that's Troy Newman.. this Troy Newman:
http://www.msmagazine.com/...
After her release, McCoy began protesting regularly with Operation Rescue in Wichita shortly after its president, Troy Newman, moved the headquarters there in 2002 for the sole purpose of tormenting Dr. Tiller into shuttering his clinic.
As Roeder’s conversations with me have indicated, McCoy has been among his most regular visitors since he was arraigned for Dr. Tiller’s murder, although according to Roeder, they did not know each other before May 2009. But McCoy is close to people Roeder is connected to, people Roeder could try to implicate as co-conspirators and/or accessories, such as Bray or Newman, the latter of whom extremely angered Roeder by denying their acquaintance.
Also that year, Roeder says he went to lunch with Newman and asked him about using violence to stop abortion.
Robb: What did you say to him?
Roeder: Oh, something like if an abortionist—I don’t even know if it was specifically Tiller…was shot, would it be justified? … And [Newman] said, “If it were, it wouldn’t upset me.”
Yes, that Troy Newman. But we all know that someone like Alessi has to have other, better friends, right?
Hanging out with Louis Gomert in his free time.
Sometimes people ask me: how brazen are Kansas Republicans, really? Apparently they are open to the idea of running a man who, as a financial adviser isn't well aware of his own tax status while he proposes a tax plan he can't define. The good news is, he seems to know the right crowd to hang out with around the watering hole.
Jeremy Alessi (R) faces John Carmichael (D), Incumbent, in Kansas House District 92.