Dems in the pitching race rewarded the donor with a lucrative contract, the documents show

Rep. Frank Mrvan, D-Ind., ran a lucrative contract with a campaign donor’s business during his time as city trustee and has since received tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from the individual and his company, according to records reviewed by Fox. Digital news.

Meanwhile, a relative of the company owner also contributed heavily to Mrvan’s congressional campaign.

In May 2007, shortly after being elected trustee of North Township, Ind., Mrvan fired Unique Events, the company hired to handle events at the town’s Wicker Park site, according to local media reports and records obtained by Fox News Digital. Mrvan then awarded the catering contract to Dining Solutions, an active business started by local resident Brian Cook, who had donated $2,000 to his inaugural trustee campaign the previous year, local records show.

“I don’t blame Unique Events, I blame Frank Mrvan,” Vicky Jarden, a local resident who had paid Unique Events to cater her June 2007 wedding in Wicker Park, told The Times of Northwest Indiana that moment “That was political… I was screwed.”

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Rep. Frank Mrvan awarded a lucrative contract to a campaign donor during his time as city trustee.
(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Ultimately, Jarden was forced to find a different venue where Unique Events could cater her wedding.

Since then, Cook’s company has earned six figures from the municipality of the deal. North Township has paid Dining Solutions at least $236,264, according to the township’s annual financial reports released between 2008 and 2018. The township has yet to release any financial reports dated after 2018.

“Ding Solutions, in Wicker Park, is the answer to your catering needs,” says the Dining Solutions website. “Established in 2007, the company has made a name for itself as one of the premier sites in Northwest Indiana.”

Meanwhile, Cook, who still serves as chairman of Dining Solutions, has simultaneously poured cash into the Democrat’s campaign coffers. The businessman has given Mrvan’s campaigns $33,237 in individual and in-kind contributions, both directly and through his company over the course of his political career.

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Dining Solutions, whose owner donates to Mrvan’s campaigns, collected more than $230,000 from an Indiana township after the now-congressman gave the company the contract.
(Frank Mrvan for Congress)

Cook contributed $27,637 to Mrvan’s local trustee campaign between 2006 and 2015, local filings show. He also gave the maximum $5,600 to Mrvan’s federal campaign during the 2020 election cycle.

In addition, Cook helped fund a national political action committee of which Mrvan was the sole beneficiary. During the 2020 election, Cook contributed $15,000 to the Middle Class Values ​​PAC, which raised just $43,000 in total.

The PAC, in turn, reported spending $32,000 on independent expenses, which benefited Mrvan. All of the PAC spending, which funded online and direct mail ads for the Mrvan campaign, came less than a month after Cook’s donation.

And Cook’s relative, Christine Cook, added another $5,600 to Mrvan’s 2020 federal inaugural campaign, filings show. Christine similarly lists Dining Solutions as her business in the records.

Brian Cook, however, wasn’t the only Dining Solutions employee to benefit from the Indiana Democrat. Karli Lecea, a current employee of the company who contributed small amounts to Mrvan’s campaign, got a job at a bank after asking the then-trustee for help.

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Mrvan also helped a current Dining Solutions employee land a job during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
(Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“Frank [Mrvan] He sent me to the township resource coordinator, Cesar Garcia, at the Circle of Services in Hessville,” Lecea told the North Township Navigator in the fall of 2020. “Cesar immediately went to work to help. The municipality also had a computer that I used to use my resume.”

“All the help Cesar gave paid off,” Lecea said. “I beat out a lot of other candidates to get the job.”

Mrvan was ultimately elected to represent Indiana’s 1st Congressional District in 2020, succeeding Democratic Rep. Peter Visclosky.

“It is absurd to suggest that a small local catering company, which has a stellar reputation in Northwest Indiana and still provides these same services today, received preferential treatment from the office of the Administrator of North Township, and this allegation is further proof that the Republican nominee is desperate,” Matt Calderon, Mrvan’s campaign manager, told Fox News Digital in an email.

Mrvan MP’s campaign said it was “absurd” to suggest his donor received preferential treatment
(Frank Mrvan Campaign)

“Desperate people do desperate things in desperate times and the Republican nominee is desperate,” he continued.

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Mrvan is running for re-election against Republican Air Force veteran Jennifer-Ruth Green. Cook Political Report has called the race a “gasp.”

Calderón added that Green’s campaign is “discovered”.

“We can safely assume that his campaign is recognizing that voters in Indiana’s 1st Congressional District know that he represents an extreme Republican agenda that wants to force 10-year-old rape survivors to give birth, destroy bargaining rights with class of our friends at work. and allow corporations to pay less tax than local law enforcement officers,” he said.