Well, I didn’t really want to wade through all the campaign finance reports filed by House candidates on July 1. But there were questions I wanted to answer, so wade through them I did.

Actually, not all. I didn’t pay much attention to incumbents. I was mainly interested in new candidates. What follows is a daunting amount of detail, so let me give you some topline findings right away.

• A lot of candidates, both new and incumbent, are having trouble complying with campaign finance law. Fortunately for them, the penalties for noncompliance are minimal to nonexistent.
• There’s been a lot of talk about centrists running as Democrats with financial backing from rich folks and business leaders. What I found, to my mild surprise, is that there aren’t really that many of ’em. Hardly enough to qualify as a trend. But it is worth focusing attention on those trying to poach Democratic seats.
• The Republican field of new House candidates is pretty much a financial wasteland. With a few exceptions. Emphasis on “few.”
• One of the most successful funders of Republican House candidates is the Rutland GOPAC. But they operate on a modest scale, and aren’t likely to move the needle appreciably.

Okay, on to the details, whether you want them or not. But hey, this is a place for political sickos, so on we go.

Scofflaws. The July 1 deadline is the most meaningful pre-primary measuring stick for candidates. It gives you a good look at their finances shortly before the start of early voting. The previous deadline of March 15 is too early to give a good reading. The next one, on August 1, is so close to the primary that it’s less significant.

Which makes it sad and shameful that so many candidates couldn’t be bothered with filing their July 1 reports. There being no real penalties for failure to comply, Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas used the only arrow in her quiver — public shaming — and issued a list of all candidates who had filed and those who hadn’t. As she told VTDigger, “Nothing has changed about the underlying gaps in our campaign finance law.” She could have added, but did not, that officeholders write the laws that apply to themselves, so this is a classic fox/henhouse situation. (Copeland Hanzas took a strong hand in this exercise herself during her tenure as chair of the House Government Operations Committee, whose remit includes campaign finance regulation.)

Folks, there were 70 candidates for the House alone who were on the naughty list. I could sort of forgive the newcomers, but there were 17 incumbents. Seventeen! Here they are: Democrats Sarita Austin, Jim Carroll, Kevin “Coach” Christie, Peter Conlon, Tim Corcoran, Emily Long, Jim Masland, Kate McCann, William Notte and Amy Sheldon; Republicans Tom Burditt, Mark Higley, Mike Marcotte, and Mary Morrissey; Progressive Kate Logan; and Republican turned independent Anne Donahue. There’s a lot of seniority on that list, and a lot of people who ought to know better.

There were 12 Senate candidates on the list — including Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth, for Pete’s sake. The only one who gets a pass is the late Dick Sears, who was included by Copeland Hanzas’ team because his name is still on the primary ballot. A few have since filed, but the list is still way too long.

“Democrats” with big business backing: It’s a short list. The most notorious of Democratic candidates being backed by people who’d normally be funding Republicans is Senate hopeful Stewart Ledbetter, who’s got close to $50,000 for his bid to unseat one of the three incumbents in Chittenden Central: Baruth and Sens. Martine Gulick and Tanya Vyhovsky. Seven Days’ Kevin McCallum posted a piece about the broader phenomenon, spotlighting Ledbetter, candidate for lieutenant governor Thomas Renner, Waterbury House candidate Elizabeth Brown, and the Northeast Kingdom’s David Kelley.

One of my big motivations for delving into House finance reports was to find out how many more such candidates there are. Is this a big deal? Are rich folks and business leaders making a real push to move the Democratic center of gravity towards the center? Maybe even limit or end the effectiveness of the Dem/Prog supermajorities?

Well, the answer is “No.” I could only find three more examples of business-oriented or -backed Democratic candidates seeking safe Democratic seats: Amanda Ellis-Thurber, who’s challenging House Ways & Means Committee Chair Emilie Kornheiser; Shawn Sweeney, running for the Shelburne seat held by the outgoing Rep. Jessica Brumsted; and Bram Kleppner, one of four Democrats (including incumbent Rep. Tiff Bluemle) running in a two-seat Burlington district.

All three come with asterisks of various sizes. Ellis-Thurber has raised an impressive $8,603 thanks to significant backing from the Brattleboro area business community, but none from the Burlington area. Her donors include local landlord Steve Heim ($1,000), insurance agency head Mark Richards ($1,000) and his son Peter ($250), Entergy executive Daniel Jeffries ($1,120), and Lisa Ford, short-term rental operator and staunch foe of regulating her industry ($500). Kornheiser has countered Ellis-Thurber’s challenge by raising more than $13,000, including three-figure checks from a number of her House colleagues and other Capitol Complex figures.

Shawn Sweeney is head of Sweeney DesignBuild. He’s raised $8,172, but it’s pretty much all family money. He kicked in $5,000 to his own campaign and his other three donors are all relatives: Carol Sweeney of Montpelier ($500) and Leon Sokol and Margaret Kaplan of New Jersey, identified in Sweeney’s report as his father- and mother-in-law. (Sokol has been a political insider in New Jersey for decades. The stories he could tell.)

Kleppner is the head of Danforth Pewter. He’s raised $9,743 including $1,000 from people named Kleppner, $1,000 from people named Pomerleau, and another grand from Vasiliy Mikheyev, an executive at Franklin Foods (“Reinventing Cream Cheese”). plus a bunch of big checks from outside Vermont. Presumably big fans of pewter gewgaws.

Even if you include all the people in McCallum’s piece plus these three, well, that’s only seven candidates: One for lieutenant governor, one for Senate, and five for House. Doesn’t strike me as a massive conspiracy. And it’s not very efficient, either. I have no idea how Ledbetter will make effective use of all that money. Likewise Brown and Ellis-Thurber; how many postcards can you print? Plus they’re challenging powerful incumbents (Waterbury incumbents Tom Stevens and Theresa Wood are both committee chairs, like Kornheiser.) That’s a long-odds task. Voters tend to stick with familiar faces. Ledbetter’s TV fame puts him in a different category.

If this was a real coordinated effort to move the Democratic center of gravity rightward, I think you’d see more intelligent, targeted investments in a much larger number of candidates. As a political observer looking for a good story, I was kind of hoping to find a boogeyman under the bed, but I can’t say I have.

Rutland GOPAC: A small-scale success story in a sea of Republican poverty. The Rutland GOPAC has been around for years, and it does a pretty good job of supporting Rutland County Republican hopefuls who’d otherwise be short on cash. The committee has raised nearly $20,000 during the current two-year cycle, and spent a little more than $6,000 so far. Donations include: House candidate David Bosch of West Rutland ($750 of his $2,008 total), JIm Casey of Bomoseen ($500 of his $1,500 total), Chris Brown of Castleton ($500 of his $2,045), Christopher King Howland of Rutland ($750 of his $802 total), Sandra Pinsonault of Dorset ($500 of her $3,520 total), and Kevin Winter of Ludlow ($500, his only donor). If there were more organizations around the state like Rutland GOPAC, Gov. Phil Scott might not suffer so many veto overrides.

Speaking of Republican poverty… I expected to find a lot of underfunded Republican candidates for the House, and I was not disappointed. It doesn’t take much to run a legislative campaign in Vermont, but you can easily spend a few thousand bucks on yard signs, placards, mailers, postage, banners, fundraising expenses, plus meals and travel and such. If your campaign kitty is less than, oh, $2,000, you’re doomed to cutting corners and failing to seize opportunities.

I won’t go encyclopedic on you here, but I will list somecandidates who barely have two nickels to rub together or are leaning heavily on their own or their families’ resources. Chris Pritchard of Wells has raised $1,000 from a mere three donors and has spent a bit more than that. Janet Payne of Weston raised no money and reported spending a grand total of $74.38, including $51.07 for postcards (at current rates, enough to send 96 cards) and $23.31 for “Parade expenses: Fees, candy.” Windham County Republicans William Harvey and Nancy Gassett submitted “No Activity” reports; Gassett’s was a “Final Report,” which seems like a cry for help.

Greg Burtt, running in the Caledonia/Washington district, also submitted a “Final Report” listing $900 in cash plus in-kind donations of $547, and no spending. I wonder what his select few donors think of that. Anthony Daniels of Barton raised $750 and spent $450 on yard signs.

Beth Quimby of Lyndon Center raised a decent $2,300 — but only $250 from donors not named “Quimby.” Lynn Smith of Essex Junction and Matthew Walker of Swanton filed “No Activity” reports.

Voranus Coffin of Cavendish raised no money and spent $808. Michael Southworth of West Danville reported zero contributions and spent $1,209. He and Coffin and the previously mentioned Jason Herron, who all reported no fundraising but significant spending, really ought to disclose where their money came from even if it was their own pockets.

These are the faithful few who bothered to file campaign finance reports. I suspect that many of those who failed to comply did so because they had nothing to report and assumed they didn’t need to bother with the paperwork. I can’t prove that, but I doubt the non-filers have gobs of cash on hand.

It’s a pitiful showing. By its own admission, the VTGOP had a “disappointing” candidate recruitment effort this year. What’s even worse is that many of the candidates they did recruit are either sorely under-resourced or not even trying.

Which maybe explains why so many business leaders are looking around for centrist Democrats to support. Those who have achieved financial success know better than to toss their funds down a rathole.