Category Archives: Campaign finance

Connect the dots, and reveal a black hat

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The Senate Government Operations Committee, last seen saying yes to the Fourteenth Star, held a hearing Friday on a bill that would increase disclosure requirements for ad campaigns meant to influence legislative debate.

The bill would require disclosure of public-policy advertising over $1,000 within 48 hours. Under current law, disclosure is only required three times a year: January 25, April 25, and July 25. The April report is the biggie, since it covers the bulk of a legislative session. And it comes at the very end of the session, which means the disclosure is almost useless for finding out who’s spending money to influence which piece of legislation.

The Associated Press’ Wilson Ring was there, and reports that one of the top lobbyists in Montpelier, Andrew MacLean, testified against the idea.

Ring failed, however, to deliver the context. Which I will now do. You’re welcome.

MacLean makes a darn fine living representing numerous business interests. He told the committee that the 48-hour disclosure requirement would be difficult for lobbyists to meet.

Which is, pardon my French, pure bullshit.

The same requirement is already placed on political candidates in the last 45 days of a campaign season. If candidates can meet the requirement, surely a well-endowed lobbying firm can do so.

MacLean also efforted the First Amendment argument —  “the proposal… could infringe on free speech rights” — which is also bullshit. Disclosure imposes no limits on speech.

His alternative? “… change your disclosure dates and maybe add one or two.”

Uh-huh. And why, you might ask, is Mr. MacLean so anxious to avoid prompt disclosure? Committee chair Jeanette White gave us a hint:

[White] said the proposal grew out of a case in which a lot of money was spent trying to get members of the House to vote against an issue. She did not say what the issue was.

Well, I’ll tell you what the issue was. It was the 2013 attempt to impose a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. The beverage and retail industries mounted an all-out effort to kill the bill, spending more than $600,000 in the first three months of 2013. We didn’t find that out until April 25, 2013, by which time the beverage tax was dead.

The chief local lobbyist for that effort? Andrew MacLean.

Fast forward to 2015, when the legislature is once again considering a beverage tax, and Andrew MacLean is once again at the forefront of a very expensive advertising and lobbying campaign against the bill.

Naturally, he prefers disclosure to be as infrequent and untimely as possible.

MacLean’s testimony was motivated by blatant self-interest. I hope the committee sees through that, and proceeds with a reasonable effort to add some transparency to the flow of money through our politics.

Just what we needed: another “grassroots” group

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Oh boy, look what’s cluttering up my inbox.

 

VPRlogo

Yes indeed, it’s yet another grassroots “movement” consisting of a few dedicated people with enough money to set up a website.

The Vermont Political Revolution’s bugbear is money in politics, which is defined as “campaign contributions from special interests.” Their strategy…

… garnering voter pledges to only vote for candidates who pledge to not seek or accept campaign contributions from special interests; likewise, candidate active learning and commitment are reinforced by garnering candidate pledges to not seek or accept campaign contributions from special interests.

Which is nice but kinda misses the point. The biggest flood of money in politics is not going to candidates, but to closely-held SuperPACs and “nonprofits” with loose to nonexistent accountability standards.

If you focus solely on campaign contributions, you get the false equivalency of left and right: Republicans have corporations and the mega-rich, Democrats have unions and George Soros. Indeed, conservatives claim that Democrats outdrew Republicans in campaign contributions in the 2014 cycle, and they may be right. But that’s because the Karl Roves of the world operate outside the bounds of parties and candidates, and rich people like the Kochs largely do the same. Their money doesn’t count as “campaign contributions.” And with all that money being spent “independently” for conservative causes, a Democrat refusing special interest contributions is basically going into a gunfight with a butter knife.

The VPR (not to be confused with, um, VPR, or theVPO for that matter) is Vermont-based, but aims to become a national organization wielding vast influence by attracting voters and candidates to its banner. Which, ha. This never works.

Especially when the organizers are virtual unknowns.

The president of The VPR is Dr. Daniel Freilich, last seen in these parts in 2010, staging a massively unsuccessful primary challenge to Sen. Patrick Leahy. He lost 89-11. The most memorable aspect of his campaign was a Web-only commercial (“I’m on a cow. HYAAA!”) spoofing the then-popular Old Spice Guy ads. (I miss that guy.)

For liberals, it’s hard to find fault with Freilich’s 2010 platform; he called for, among other things, universal health insurance, a more progressive tax system, and improvements in the environment and public health. And he also, as it happens, used the phrase “A Vermont Political Revolution” in his campaign, so he obviously believes in recycling.

So Dr. Dan seems to be a well-intentioned guy with a thing for lost political causes. First, challenging St. Patrick, and now launching a nationwide “grassroots movement.” The VPR’s homepage features a large national map, promising a 50-state reach; but so far, they’ve received a total of five “voter pledges,” four from Vermont and one from New Hampshire, and no “candidate pledges.”

It’s also launched a very limited database — grandly dubbed “an analysis and report” — seemingly designed to shame candidates into complying with its “no special interests” pledge. Each candidate in the 2014 Vermont campaign is listed, and two questions are answered for each: Did they accept special interest contributions (according to their campaign finance filings), and did they pledge not to?

Any candidate who accepted such contributions is highlighted in bright red. Subtle. (Also hard to read.)

That’s the extent of the “analysis.”

The VPR seems to be a noble, if somewhat mis-targeted, effort. But I have two fundamental problems with it:

— It claims to be a “grassroots movement” when it consists of a bare handful of people with a preset agenda.

— The track record of such efforts is dismal to say the least.

I’m sure we’ll continue to get emails from The VPR, and I’m sure that the audible “ping” of an arriving email is about all we’ll ever hear from them.

Drivin’ down the highway, throwin’ money out the windows

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That would appear to be Governor Shumlin’s campaign strategy in the final two weeks of the campaign. Faced with less-than-daunting opposition from the likes of Mr. Blandy and Mr. Fringey, not to mention Ms. Hempy, Hat Lady and The Beard, the Governor has been spending money like he’s running against a Koch brother.

The final pre-election campaign finance deadline was today, and Shumlin’s money machine was in overdrive, raising another $179,000* since mid-October and spending an incredible $342,000, more than half of it on TV advertising.

*Including $96,000 in cash, and $83,000 in “in-kind” donations. The latter were services performed by the state Democratic Party: robocalls and mailers. I guess his campaign was too strapped for cash to foot the bills himself, sheesh. 

That’s $342,000 spent in two and a half weeks. 

That brings his total spending on the campaign to $890,000, which is almost three times as much as he spent two years ago to defeat Randy Brock. Unless he’s really scared of Scott Milne, I’d say he’s going all out to boost his vote total. A finish under 50% would be embarrassing and make a serious dent in his political clout for his third term; anything less than 53% or so would be a significant deflation of his 2012 total, and weaken him going into the fight for single-payer health care.

Scott Milne, meanwhile, did well by his low standards, but mainly because he injected a bunch of his own money into his own campaign. He took in $91,000 since Oct. 15, but that includes a $50,000 loan to his campaign and $25K in “in-kind” contributions; the lion’s share of that was in the form of mass mailings done by the Vermont Republican State Committee on Milne’s behalf.

For the entire campaign, he’s raised $238,000. But that includes almost $90,000 from himself and his family. Plus another $20K or so from the famous Boieses.

He spent $98,000 since Oct. 15, mainly on TV ads, bringing his total spending for the campaign to $211,000. Which would be a nice total if he were running for Lieutenant Governor, but it’s simply not enough to be competitive, especially against Governor Moneybags.

Libertarian Dan Feliciano, meanwhile, limped to the finish line with a few thousand bucks in outside donations plus another $10,000 in self-funding. Most of his recent spending was on airing his awful TV ad. But again, Feliciano showed no sign of attracting broad support as expressed in campaign donations. He got damn little, in fact. In the marketplace of ideas, nobody was buying Dan the Libertarian Man.

In the race for Lieutenant Governor, incumbent Phil Scott eased back the pace. He raised less than $10,000 and spent about $10,000 since the last report. For the entire campaign, he’s raised $289,000 and spent $233,000.

The big news there is that Scott will head into the next campaign with a good-sized warchest by the standards of anyone other than Peter Shumlin, Pat Leahy, Peter Welch, and Bernie Sanders. He reports cash-on-hand totaling $98,000, which is a nice head start on 2016.

His opponent Dean Corren, as reported in this space, went on a spending binge in the last two weeks. He spent $92,000 since Oct. 15, including an intensive (by Lt. Gov. standards) TV ad campaign. And he planned out his expenditures intelligently; his campaign to date has spent $188,000, leaving only $12,000 left of his (mainly publicly financed) $200,000 kitty.

And now, ’tis the night before Election, and all through the state, not a candidate was stirring. Not even… hmm… does anybody’s name rhyme with “state”?

Corren redux

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Got a phone call today. From Ben and Jerry.

Well, they weren’t live on the line; it was a robo-call on behalf of Dean Corren for Lieutenant Governor. And no, they didn’t offer free ice cream for my vote.

It’s part of Corren’s last-minute, multi-media blitz. Since last I reported, the Corren campaign has filed four more mass-mediz expenditure reports with the Secretary of State’s office, one of which was a $3,000 bill for robo-calls.

The new filings add up to $11,411, bringing the grand total of Corren spending since Oct. 20 to a whopping $72,372. That includes TV, radio, newspaper, and online advertising, robo-calls, graphic design services, and campaign consultancy.

Pretty impressive. It’ll have to be equally effective, for him to have a chance at taking down Phil Scott next Tuesday.

Dean Corren puts the pedal to the metal

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The Secretary of State’s office has been blizzarded by Mass Media spending reports from the Dean Corren campaign in the past eight days, representing a strong home-stretch advertising blitz for Phil Scott’s challenger.

Since October 20, Corren has reported spending a total of $60,961, with almost two-thirds of the money going to TV advertising. Going into the campaign, Corren had a fixed budget of $200,000 because once he opted for public financing, he couldn’t take any further donations.

The rundown:

  • $38,980 for TV (broadcast and cable)
  • $8,095 for radio
  • $5,387 for newspapers
  • $4,000 for campaign consultancy by State Rep. Chris Pearson’s firm
  • $2,385 for graphic design work
  • $1,542 for online advertising
  • $572 for printing (The campaign had done a lot more printing earlier in the season.)

All in all, it’s a nice healthy push. Earlier, I’d wondered if Corren was hoarding his money too long. Now, I think he was right to keep his powder dry until the campaign’s closing days. Most voters don’t pay much attention until right before the election. Except for those who don’t pay any attention at all.

Also, the recent TV ads have good production values and strong messaging. I don’t know that it’s enough to knock off Phil Scott, but full credit to the Corren team for a sound strategy.

Dan Feliciano invests in himself; nobody else does

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Nice little discovery by the Freeploid’s Terri Hallenbeck: apparently, Dan Feliciano’s had a little trouble with the mechanics of the Secretary of State’s new online campaign finance system, and mistakenly underreported his own donations to his campaign.

Dan Feliciano, the Libertarian candidate for governor, has contributed $30,000 to his own campaign — or nearly three-quarters of his campaign’s money — though that information was unclear on campaign finance reports filed with the state.

Selling trinkets in the park: a vital cog in the Feliciano money machine.

Selling trinkets in the park: a vital cog in the Feliciano money machine.

That’s $30,000 out of his fundraising total of less than $41,000. He’s also received $1,153 from two people named Aja, which is his wife’s maiden name.

Add it up: Feliciano has raised less than $10,000 from people outside his immediate family. For the entire campaign.

So the question remains: what happened to the Feliciano groundswell? To, ahem, #Felicianomentum? To judge by his finances, his would-be challenge to the political establishment has been a damp fizzle.

Even the notable Republicans who publicly backed his candidacy, like Brady Toensing and Wendy Wilton and Patricia Crocker and Jim Peyton and Becky Amos and Tom Burditt and Chet Greenwood, don’t appear on Feliciano’s donor list. Mark Snelling gave one gift, a munificent $200. GOP House candidate Paul Dame chipped in $101. Darcie Johnston hasn’t given any money, but she has been acting as Feliciano’s unpaid campaign manager.

Which, judging by her past record, may have a cash value of less than zero.

The point is, the right wing of the Republican Party may have raised their voices for Feliciano, but when it comes to money, they’ve left him to fend for himself.

A great deal was made of Feliciano’s showing in the Republican primary: he took 15% of the vote as a write-in candidate. As a percentage, that’s impressive. But it’s 15% of a very small total: about 2,100 votes. At the time, many thought Feliciano would build on that showing and provide a real challenge to Scott Milne, if not Governor Shumlin.

Now, looking at his financials, I wonder if that 2,100 doesn’t represent a high-water mark. Oh, he’ll probably get more votes in the general election — but he’s not getting anywhere near 15%. I’m beginning to wonder if he’ll even crack the magic 5% number that would give the Libertarians major-party status in the next cycle.

Because considering the latest news about the extent of his self-dependence, his campaign looks weaker than ever.

More of the same in the money game

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So yesterday marked another campaign finance reporting deadline. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but Scott Milne tried to bracket the news by making a bunch of his own.

And no, I don’t mean his 12 Seconds of Daily Show Fame. I mean yesterday’s unveiling of the Milne Education Plan, and this morning’s release of his personal finances.

Which perhaps drew some attention away from Milne’s return to the fundraising doldrums. After a very successful (by his modest standards) September, he failed to carry the Money Momentum into October. He raised a mere $12,000 in the first half of the month, bringing his total for the entire campaign to $146,000.

The latter total is vastly inflated by $39,000 from himself and his immediate family. Plus roughly another $20K from the Boies Family. (And I think he’s fresh out of Boieses.) He’s also got a $25,000 loan from himself on the books — soon to be forgiven, I’d guess. Add it all up, he’s got maybe $30,000 left at his disposal as he enters the home stretch.

One little note of kismet from the Milne report: he bagged a $150 donation from none other than Tom Salmon, former Auditor General. Salmon will forever be remembered for his famous line, “I need to be an authentic self-utilizing power along the lines of excellence.” I guess The Little Big Fish recognizes a kindred spirit among inarticulate candidates.

The other notable fundraising FAIL was the Dan Feliciano campaign, which seems to be slowly settling into the third-party mire. His fundraising total for the first half of the month, over $13,000, looks healthy; but it includes $10,000 from himself. Even with his own substantial gift, his campaign is in the red, having raised about $30,000 and spent $32,000. Still no sign of #Felicianomentum.

Contrast that with the Shumlin money machine, which raised $65,000 in the past two weeks for a campaign-to-date total of $777,000. And remember, he began 2014 with a lot of money in the bank. And he’s continued his post-Labor Day spending binge, paying out $236,000 in the first half of the month.

Just about the only happy Republican these days is Phil Scott. The People’s Lieutenant Governor kept up his furious pace; he took in $52,000 this time around, bringing his campaign-to-date total to $254,000. He’s spending just about as fast as he’s raising; campaign expenditures total $223,000, including a hefty $73,000 in the first half of October.

I haven’t checked, but this has GOT to be a record-breaker for most expensive statewide race, non-gubernatorial division. It also establishes Scott as a powerful fundraiser, which bodes well for a future campaign for Governor, should he ever decide to climb that mountain.

So, no big news at the top of the ticket. Status quo rules: Shumlin and Phil Scott have big bucks, Dean Corren continues to spend his $200,000 kitty, and Shumlin’s challengers are severely handicapped by a lack of funds.

How to waste $142,000

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Two suggestions:

1. Get yourself 7,100 $20 bills. Scatter them in a big pile. Douse in gasoline, add one lit match.

2. Spend it on Republican advertising in Vermont.

Image from the RSLC ad. Or maybe from a Cialis spot.

Image from the RSLC ad. Or maybe from a Cialis spot.

As first reported by VTDigger, a national organization called the Republican State Leadership Committee has chosen the second course, pouring $142,000 into a TV/radio ad campaign for Republican legislative candidates.

They might have asked Lenore Broughton how this kind of big-money, old-media, carpet-bombing technique works. She spent at least a million bucks in 2012 on a TV/radio/bulk mail blitz attacking the Dems, and failed to move the electoral needle at all.

But the RSLC didn’t ask her. In fact, they didn’t talk to anyone in Vermont. Just ask one of the first guys they should have talked to.

Rep. Don Turner, R-Milton, the House minority leader, said he welcomed the media campaign, but was unaware of it until VTDigger showed him the ad.

So a D.C.-based Republican organization is running generic ads for nameless candidates, and they didn’t even consult the House’s top Republican. Somehow I don’t think the Democrats are too worried about this. Oh wait, here’s a Democrat now:

It’s just like in 2012, when there was a single Republican donor spending approximately $1 million here in Vermont. The VTGOP is just trying to bankroll their way towards relevance. It’s not going to work. Vermonters have already made it clear that the right-wing agenda has no place in our state, and they will make it clear again on November 4th. The RSLC is spending six figures on behalf of VTGOP candidates and that money comes directly from the Koch brothers and other insidious sources.

That’s from Ben Sarle, the VT Dems’ communications director. Now, naturally you’d expect him to say that. But the facts on the ground support his assertions. No matter what RSLC does, the Dems are extremely unlikely to lose more than a handful of legislative seats; it’s even possible that they’ll add a few to their outsized majorities.

But shed no tears for the RSLC. They’ve got money to burn, with a donor list that’s a Who’s Who of corporate America. In 2012 alone, RSLC spent some $39 million in state campaigns. So a lousy $142,000? That’s pocket change.

Oh, for your further entertainment, here’s the RSLC’s Top 20 donors for the year so far, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Screen Shot 2014-10-10 at 12.45.55 AM

Mmmm, delightful. Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Banking, Big Pharma. Big Telecom. Wal-Mart. Gambling. The US Chamber of Commerce. They’re all there.

Inclluding at least a couple of Bigs that have been generous to Governor Shumlin: Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Comcast.

Huh.

Say, Ben, perhaps you’d best tone down that talk about “insidious sources.”

Failure to detonate

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Well, the “money bombs” have come and gone for two Vermont conservatives… and both, apparently, fizzled out.

Gubernatorial hopeful Dan the Libertarian Man, whose fundraising has fallen far short of his perceived appeal, put out a Tweet on Wednesday calling for $100,000 “in the next 48 hours.” He also posted the plea on his campaign website. Which was, shall we charitably say, “optimistic” for a campaign that had only managed to raise about $17,000 to date. (I sense the Hack’s fine Italian hand behind this maneuver.)

I guess Feliciano thought better of it, though, because after a couple more Tweets (“We don’t have much time”) he withdrew from the Twitterverse and has yet to update his webpage or otherwise unveil his total haul.

Profiles in Courage, Dan?

Speaking of courage, at least the other guy owned up to his failure. Mark Donka, candidate for Congress, had sought $25,000 in the 24 hours of Friday, October 3. He posted it on his website, his Facebook page, and on Twitter, and he ran updates on Facebook.

He fell way short, of course. According to the last update on his FB page, he took in about $3,000. But at least he had the stones to see it through, and acknowledge the outcome:

Yeah, I know, “money bob.” But I’m not even going to make fun of his typo. Not when one of his “supporters” bailed on him with this sad little FB post:

Screen Shot 2014-10-04 at 4.36.04 PM

That’s just pathetic. Look, Mr. Baker, no matter how rapacious you think “Governor Pinnocio” (sic) may be, he’s not stealing your wallet, confiscating your bank account, and rummaging through your sofa cushions. And let’s just leave alone the gratuitous, proto-racist “Dumbo” reference. (Big ears, African, hahaha.)

I’ll believe that you can’t spare $20 for your man “Marc” if you can show me that you’re living on peanut butter and Spaghetti-O’s and you canceled your cable to pay the rent. Otherwise, you’re a paper patriot.

And so are the thousands of other people who plan to vote for Mark Donka, but couldn’t part with a measly Jackson on his behalf. Look, I disagree with Donka on just about every issue, but at least he has the guts to get out there and fight. He’s taken on a hopeless job — challenging Peter Welch in liberal old Vermont — not once, but twice. He deserves credit for that. And he deserves better from his ideological compadres, who believe this country is going to Hell in a handbasket but can’t rouse themselves to do anything about it beyond watching Fox News and posting illiterate Facebook messages.

And one more thing: If Dan Feliciano comes out of the woodwork and posts a total for his $100,000 money blitz, I’ll be glad to report it in this space.

The absurd extremities of the public financing law

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The Vermont Democratic Party, having lopsidedly endorsed Prog/Dem Dean Corren as its candidate for Lieutenant Governor, seems to be doing all it can to strip away any value from that endorsement.

The Vermont Democratic Party this week sent glossy color mailings to reliably Democratic voters, urging them to vote for its slate of statewide candidates. But Corren wasn’t mentioned.

Dean Corren at the Democratic State Committee meeting in September.

Dean Corren at the Democratic State Committee meeting in September. Photo courtesy of… well… me.

When the Democratic State Committee endorsed Corren, party officials made it clear that there were significant restrictions on their ability to offer him any tangible support — voter data, Coordinated Campaign, etc. — because by accepting public financing, Corren had to forswear all other fundraising avenues. Including in-kind support. Indeed, they said they would have adhered to the same limits if the Democratic hopeful, John Bauer, had qualified for public financing.

The Dems were advised by their lawyers to steer clear of anything that might run afoul of the law. Which allowed them to circumvent questions about the wisdom of sharing the party’s legendary database with a Progressive, who might then share it with his party. A valid concern, when the Progressive Party often runs candidates against Democrats.

But to exclude any mention of Dean Corren from mailings? To me, that seems an excess of caution. And a serious handicap for his campaign.

And while Corren was in full agreement with the Dems on their withholding of voter data and the Coordinated Campaign, he seems less satisfied with this move:

Corren said he’s prevailing upon Democratic officials to include him on the next round of mailings.

“The conversations go on,” Corren said. “We’re in the midst of conversations. So it’s not like it’s a one-shot deal.”

Corren has dutifully played nice, and I commend him for that. But excluding Corren from a mass mailing, to me, is stretching the legal point. It raises doubts about the Dems’ real motives.

I’ve been told that the Dems don’t want to turn “tangible assistance” into an issue for Phil Scott; but issues like that are inside baseball, and have little or no effect on voters. Maybe the risk is small enough to merit the potential reward.

At the very least, it points out a serious shortcoming with the public financing law. The qualification standards need to be loosened, so more candidates can qualify. And, apparently, there needs to be a better definition of “tangible assistance” so that parties don’t have to pretend that one of their own doesn’t exist, just because s/he qualified for public financing.