Campaign Financial Reports Oddly Telling

Hey, there's interesting news at the Fitchburg Pride!

Seems that campaign spending reports are in and there are a mess of numbers to look through! Sadly, I don't have access to the actual reports so we'll just have to take the Pride's word on stuff. [Update 12:15 pm: thanks to Jason of the FP for some additional data I'm working in now.]

How's it break down? Sort of like this:

• Tom Donnelly:
  • $17,980 raised, which includes $5,000 of his own money. So that's $12,980 from people who aren't Tom Donnelly.
  • $5,940 of that's from out-of-town donors.
  • Has $7,345 cash on hand.
  • "Donnelly is also carrying about $20,000 in liabilities in the form of loans. Included with the loan from this year are a number of loans dating back to 1999 from Donnelly to the campaign that have not been repaid."
  
  
• Lisa Wong:
  • $14,409 raised. $500 (the maximum personal contribution) of it her own, which puts her at $13,909 otherwise. That means she's the biggest money-raiser when we eliminate candidates' donations to themselves.
  • $7,074 of that is from out-of-town.
  • $3,091 cash on hand.
  • No report of any debts.
  
  
• Ted DeSalvatore:
  • "Just south of $11,000" raised, from "13 individual donors." I presume none of it is his money.
  • The Pride doesn't tell us how much of that is out-of-town, but I'm betting a bunch is. [Update: Jason from the pride indicates $1,800 from out-of-town donors.]
  • Zero cash on hand, because he has...
  • $6,077 in unpaid bills. Ouch!
  
  
• Ron Dionne:
  • No money raised.
  • No money spent.
  • Oh, he did get two in-kind donations of printer ink cartridges, for $120.68.

There's also mention of who gave money to Donnelly and Wong, both getting reasonable support from local bigshots who I don't care to go over here. Ted's report is rather more confusing, as:

DeSalvatore's report details only 13 individual donors. Law requires details accounting for only donors who give more than $200. The report lumps together fundraising from three events over the last year -- $1,575 from a "Thank You Party" held before DeSalvatore was officially a candidate, $1,429 from a "Heartbeat Dinner Dance," and $2,370 from a "Gold Rush BBQ."

Mind you, Donnelly and Wong both reported on lower-money donors. I guess Ted's treasurer isn't big on record keeping, or public disclosure of relevant information.

Additionally, even if we remove the three big events, Ted's left with about $5,500 in donations from just 13 donors (I think. This would be easier with the raw data and not just the incomplete Pride reporting.). [Update: Jason at FP thinks there was another "clump of unlisted, random donations" as well.] It would appear he has some interested parties throwing decent chunks of money at him. Pity for them that he can't seem to follow a damn budget and is six grand in the red. Did he learn nothing from his own bankruptcy filing earlier in life?

This is actually quite an interesting report, particularly when you consider the town's fiscal mismanagement in the past and the currently miserable state of its finances.

Wong is apparently the only candidate who's capable of working with money and not going into the red. Plus she's pretty good at raising it. Moneybags Donnelly has his own money to throw around, but he still has twenty grand in liabilities (though he does at least have cash on hand). DeSalvatore has six grand in liabilities, and no cash on hand. Perhaps he should stop it with the fucking signs already. Dionne has no real campaign and simply has a printer with expensive ink cartridges. I wonder which of these four candidates would be better at dealing with the town's budget?

It's no surprise that Donnelly raised a good chunk of change. The guy's been here forever and is very much the "establishment" candidate. Plus he has his own money to throw around. Why he still has twenty grand in liabilities and can't repay eight-year-old loans is beyond me, but certainly doesn't give me a good feeling about his ability to manage finances.

DeSalvatore's report is just weird. He doesn't report on the small contributions, has no cash on hand, and has six thousand dollars in unpaid bills. Incidentally, $5,000 of those are (indirectly) to his campaign manager, who I suspect probably won't send him to collections. Of course, I believe $5,000 is quite a bit higher than the maximum campaign contribution allowed, so surely he'll be collecting on that bill at some point. Right?

Either way, Ted spent more money than he had. A lot more money than he had. During the debate, he said his qualification for handling the city's $95 million budget was "common sense." While that's ridiculous in itself, this goes on to indicate that his "common sense" is incredibly bad. Basically, if he ran the city budget the way he runs his campaign budget, he'd spend $173 million and have a deficit of $78 million. Criminy!

Dionne has no campaign, obviously. But his report does raise the issue of how printer ink is ridiculously expensive, so I guess that's something. He's bringing light to important issues!

I think the pretty obvious choice here if you care about the city's finances is to vote for Wong. It looks more and more like the race is going to come down to her and Donnelly anyway, which would be a very nice thing as far as I'm concerned.