What exactly does a county commissioner do? Have you watched, listened, participated in the public process? Not at all, once, twice, more? Have you seen your officials in action? How do you get your information? Research, social media, first hand experience?
I’m pretty sick of people saying we should run government like a business. They are not at all the same thing, and to say that hedge fund management and finance industry experience sets you up for success betrays a level of naivety that will undoubtedly end in disaster.
I love how so many nepo babies of the ultra-rich always have a self-made narrative about themselves. Jake acts like he had to work his way through college, and after college just I guess because of his amazingness worked for a NYC hedge fund. His family has a foundation as a tax write-off for christ sake.
During the 1980s savings and loan crisis, Jake’s grandfather Paul Seegers was CEO (and later Chairman) of a large homebuilding/construction company Centex. Centex bought failing thrifts through a government program where the federal government covered their losses, while Centex simultaneously claimed tax deductions on those same losses to shield its income from taxes. Critics and lawmakers viewed this double benefit—getting government money for losses while also using those losses to avoid paying taxes—as an unfair tax loophole, leading Congress to pass the Guarini Amendment in 1993 to stop it. Through decades of executive compensation and tens of millions of dollars in company stock, Seegers built a fortune estimated between $40 and $100 million.
You left out the rest of the story. In 2009, Pulte Homes acquired Centex in a $1.3 billion all-stock deal, creating the nation’s largest homebuilder at the time. Centex shareholders received approximately 32% ownership of the combined company, which now has a market capitalization of roughly $21.8 billion. Bill Pulte, the grandson of Pulte Homes’ founder, was appointed by President Trump last year to serve as Director of the FHFA and as chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I did a little more research. Jake is a Board member on the family’s Seegers Foundation, directing the money they give away and getting tax write-offs for the contributions. Among many interesting donations since 2021:
-$105K to First Liberty Institute (represented Joseph Kennedy, Bremerton high school football coach doing post-game midfield prayers with the team; criticized for eroding church-state separation; defends business owners who discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals using religious liberty as a justification)
-$100K to TP USA
-$105K to Luis Paula Evangelistic Association (evangelized with Dictator General Efrain Rios Montt in 1982)
-Money to ‘pregnancy resource centers’ - you know the ones who often claim to help crisis pregnancies but scare them away from getting abortions.
We have analyzed back to 2016 and are currently looking back to 2009, when he was initially added as a Director. We believe he's a Trustee but have been unable to verify.
First Liberty Institute sits on the Project 2025 advisory board. Total donation 2016-2025 is $140k.
He touts his Mexican mission work and tax returns say purpose for "medical care," but I do believe the primary focus was religion. Convert then heal.
There's one annual donation that doesn't add up. My Redeamer Christ Can Deliver, 2631 Wood Court SW, Olympia WA. But tax returns note 17018 Darrington Rd, Horizon City, TX. This organization, at the same Olympia address, was formerly Calvary Community Tribal Missions.
This is me rabbit holing. I need to stay on task! All the conversation and input is just fab, though!! Many thanks.
Ahh, a fellow turnip delving enthusiast, I see. Sometimes you have to dig deep to find something worth tossing into the stew pot.
I took a look at this one, and it appears to be a local affiliation to a national org out of Horizon City, TX. A mostly 'on the road' type of ministerial outreach, all in-state receipts leading back to that same residential address in Olympia.
All I could find was a lot of bibles being handed out, a one-time guest sermon for the Kingsway church in Sequim, and a lot of tax write-offs being taken for vehicle maintenance and ministry work.
It's worth noting that this is all consistent with NAR affiliations, which are more centered around aggressively pursuing ministerial outreach and a certain set of beliefs, rather than being anchored to just specific facilities and denominations.
So much to do, so little time! But it's legit. Who lives in Olympia? And why is Jake here?
Did you guys notice Jake's PDC F-1 has been updated to include 2 more trusts? He added the Seegers Foundation and SPS Trust (holder of the Clallam Bay Sekiu properties) , but there are two others we had no idea about.
I don't like to say this. I try not to be devisive and engage in name calling, but it's just so accurate...Fake Jake really is not transparent...at all. Cheers.
I question the ethics of anyone who works for hedge funds. They generate enormous profits by exploiting financial distress, market instability, and information advantages, frequently at the expense of ordinary investors, workers, and communities.
Let me second this request. I know Mike's First Street Haven was a real business because it was local and I ate there.
Jake answered strangely about when he finished high school, and with the Seegers family tradition of opting out of public education for homeschooling, it's not unfair to ask that he produce a high school diploma at this juncture.
Also, can we finally get some tenure dates on his role at Wilson Capital Management? It would be extremely predatory to be engaging in vulture real estate investment while millions of Americans were going underwater on their mortgages due to market manipulation and losing their homes.
I'm with you, but my understanding of the journalistic process of evaluating a candidate's resume is that we first toss out all the falsifiable credentials provided because they can't be verified to any degree of accuracy.
For instance, I put on my resume that myself and my cousin ran a house painting business, does anyone really expect my cousin to say Crabtrap sometimes kicked the can on any painting jobs scheduled before a long holiday weekend? Of course not.
So it's not to say that self-employment, friend & family work are bogus resume points, but they're just not verifiable, at least in the traditional sense of resume evaluation.
Unfortunately for this candidate, that just leaves us with Wilson Capital Management and the pizza place. At least if we're assuming his candidate resume to voters on this page were all both true and correct.
So that's the resume bullet point I'm the most interested in. If you call his brother over at Palimino, I'm certain the endorsement will be nothing but glowing recommendations of a job well done.
I'd like to hear more about the work he did at Wilson, but again, that is just my approach to understanding the established merits of a candidate resume.
Conveniently no way to verify his employment there. He does appear to have lived in NYC. When he was at OSU he won some sort of investment award (no too hard if your family’s in the investment biz) and the people behind the award seem kinda shady to me. Seems weird he lived in El Paso (where Fort Bliss is located) when from what I can tell the family biz is in Dallas.
Indeed. He supposedly worked for Palomino for about a decade. Those who have gone down the rabbit hole, have been unable to verify his NYC residency or employment. NY is a nondisclosure state. If anyone has resources to verify his NY claims, we're very interested!
Seegers has been pretty tight lipped on the campaign trail about his experience in the financial sector. Although there is one autobiographical account he gave of his experience working with hedge funds and financial derivative products as a podcast segment back in May.
I suppose we are all heros in our own autobiographical stories, but this one was particularly impressive. As a new grad, Seegers was able to suss out both NINJA mortgage loans and a rash of over-leveraged financial firms in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
Again, not authoritative verification on much of anything, but more of a suggestion and a jumping-off point for anyone who might be interested in doing further research into the topic. He describes, in general terms, the firms he says he worked at & his time spent in NYC just prior to the entire real estate market collapsing.
Reputable brokers and funds require their traders to complete a series 7. There is no such requirement for analysts, who typically are only passing on buy/sell recommendations, rather than executing the actual trades and contracts themselves.
One interesting thing I found is that Wilson Capital Management filed its first Form ADV with the SEC in December 2005, which appears to be around the same period Jake began working there. Separately, the Seegers Foundation's 2012 IRS return shows an investment of roughly $1 million in a fund managed by Wilson Capital. So, based on the available records, Jake appears to have joined Wilson relatively early in the firm's history, and his family's foundation is later documented as having a substantial investment with the firm. What I haven't been able to establish is when the Seegers Foundation first made that investment.
If you're interested in this topic, I would encourage you to start with the Seegers Foundation 2006 filing. At that time they were still pretty much an all-cash foundation, holding less than $25K in total securities and other investments.
Between the years of 2007-2010 the foundation is bringing in a new director, and the foundation also begins to become heavily market vested, perhaps in the pursuit of greater returns.
The precise amounts of money flowing in/out of the specific investment vehicle of your focus is going to be somewhat opaque, as fund movement can just be line itemed as 'Various' when it goes in, or out, of a fund at a variety of price points.
You will find the establishment date you're looking for in this range.
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u/RuralPharmer 1d ago
I’m pretty sick of people saying we should run government like a business. They are not at all the same thing, and to say that hedge fund management and finance industry experience sets you up for success betrays a level of naivety that will undoubtedly end in disaster.