I analyze how the 2008 Libertarian Presidential campaign spent its income in August 2008. by George Phillies
(libertarian)
Friday, June 5, 2009
Where Your Money Went:
August for the Bob Barr Campaign
I continue the series exploring how the Bob Barr 2008 Presidential campaign spent its money, and, to some extent, what came of that spending. Last month, we looked at spending through the end of July, which resulted in some public attention, including the media interview from which I quoted.
Let me collect the dots a bit more. You can't purchase interviews, at least not with the legitimate media, but you can spend money in ways that create circumstances that are likely to lead to interviews. What did the libertarian political movement get from the interview? You received a candidate making statements heard by the public, statements whose appearance in the public ear was facilitated by your money, some of you. The question is then: Is that the message you wanted the public to hear from our Presidential campaign? I'm referring to messages like:
"Interviewer: I understand the argument in favor of legalizing drugs. I understand it; I've never figured out why it was as prominent as it is within the Libertarian Party.
Barr: It isn't. It is not...
Interviewer: It has been in the past..
Barr: Oh, it absolutely has been, and that's one of the reason why the party has not been able to do as well as it should be doing, in terms of the mainstream message that is the heart of Libertarianism."
There is a major issue -- drug legalization -- and there is the message that the Barr campaign put out on this issue.
Now let us advance to August. I take my numbers from the "September" FEC report, the report covering August. Income fell from July to August, from $259,000 in July to $224,000 in the next month. Those dollar numbers are substantially larger than the dollar numbers for the Badnarik 2004 campaign, which raised slightly over $178,000 in August 2004. Through the end of August, Barr 2008 had received more than $859,000.
How, though, was the money spent? A substantial piece went to people. Libertarian author James Bovard received $15,000 as an "authoring fee". It appears to many that he substantially wrote the two campaign books released by the Barr campaign. I've written eight* books myself, with several others under way. I can assure you that two books on short notice is a prodigious labor. Political Consultant Doug Bandow was given another $10,000, as he was month after month, which translates to an annual rate of $120,000 per year. Robert Stuber and Steve Sinton each received $4000. Shane Cory and Russ Verney were not paid at all in August. There were also field consultants; in alphabetical order, Mike Ferguson, Andrew MacPherson, Ashley Petty, Jason Pye, and John Seewoester received between them $9161.
Getting on the ballot received $17,123, more than most other Libertarian Presidential campaigns have spent on putting their own candidate on the ballot. Despite those efforts, Barr was on the ballot in rather fewer states than other recent Libertarian Presidential candidates. In my own state, we needed a law suit to replace our stand-in with Barr, even though we had written agreement from our Secretary of State that a candidate substitution form was available.
Money was also given to various firms, including $11,000 to Liberty Strategies for Contract Services,
$4185 to Advocacy Ink for Media Consulting, and $2500 to Prime One for political consulting. Finally, $5250 was spent for what in the trade is known as compliance consulting, that is, paying someone to make sure your actions are consistent with FEC regulations. A separate $11,850 went toward legal fees.
Money was actually sent on campaigning. In the list of FEC disbursements, there is $2824 for Advertising, $13,316 for Direct Marketing, $2594 for Events, $1073 for List Rental, $6648 for Order fulfillment, $9896 for Postage, printing and Promotional Items, $2188 for Shipping, and $989 for Signs, not to mention $240 for Telemarketing paid to Winning Edge International of Las Vegas and $129 for T-shirts. Some of you will correctly note that the direct marketing expense could be interpreted as a way to raise money, rather than an advertising path. However, as conservative direct mail guru Richard Viguerrie has explained and continues to demonstrate, when you send someone a long letter as a direct mail fund raising piece, all those sharp lines you put in your letter serve to frame the issues and direct the recipient's thinking, even if he does not send you any money.
Then there were travel and meeting expenses, including $23,000 for hotels and airlines, a thousand dollars for meeting expenses, and $3194 for limousines. Note that I did say "limousines", not "rental cars". I am using the description in the report. A web search sampling the companies involved found that most of them are in the business of providing limousines. They were not cab companies with fancy names.
All that staff needed an office. For the month, the campaign paid over $5600 for office equipment and furniture and $16,149 to rent the space it was using. The office space had utilities as a separate charge, for which the campaign paid $1246. The campaign also spent $1522 for office supplies of various sorts.
Finally, there are Information Technology expenses, variously describer. IT itself cost $17,184, almost all paid to ThruTech. Terra Eclipse, the web firm that did the Ron Paul web site and that apparently did the technology for the Barr site, was paid another $10,916 in "transaction fees", while software expenses reached $2490. If you put those numbers together, that's more than $30,000 in a month for a web site and other computer costs.
Put it all together -- I've skipped a few small bits and pieces -- and you are looking at something around a quarter million dollars in spending, of which 12% was spent on the internet and a few percent more went for advertising items.
And now the question: Are you happy with where your money went?
*Eight books by Phillies? A statistical mechanics textbook. Two textbooks (with a collaborator) on game design. Two books on Libertarian politics. A collection of short stories. Two published novels. Oh, right! There's another complete novel not yet at a publisher, which would be the ninth book when published.
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