Political Practices Complaint Filed Against Missoula County Sheriff Candidate TJ McDermott by Candidate Josh Clark

The fallout from the hotly contested Missoula County Sheriff’s race still hasn’t settled. Just yesterday, August 25, former candidate Josh Clark announced that he had filed a complaint with the Montana Commissioner of Political Practice's Office against democratic primary victor TJ McDermott. Clark alleges that the McDermott campaign broke the law by working too closely with a corporation during the campaign.

"Elected officials and appointed officials in the State of Montana are charged with acting to prohibit such inappropriate contributions to candidate's campaigns," Clark said. "The reason I did this is because I made a career of standing up for people, standing up for the people of Missoula county, and enforcing the law. If I didn't do this, no one would investigate this."

Clark points specifically to a "meet and greet" hosted by the Missoula based law firm Datsopolis, MacDonald & Lind which reportedly paid for the mailers and card stock for the event.

"The corporation itself paid for this event, paid for everything involved in the event," Clark said. "It is on [McDermott's] Facebook page that the corporation allowed him to use the phone system and the office space of the corporate lawfirm to make phone calls prior to the election and try to get people to vote for him, for TJ McDermott. These are all types of contributions that a corporation can not do."

Clark says the complaint isn’t about sour grapes, but because he believes that “people need to stand up and do the right thing.”