Andy's savvy vanity

By Wally Edge

Questions have come up about First District Republican Andy Harris’ $20,000 self-loan to his campaign on March 31, the last day of the reporting period.

For example, with all that cash on hand (more than $185,000 sans loan) and double that in contributions ($380,000 sans loan), what the heck was he loaning his campaign $20,000 for?

Those close to the Harris campaign said it was a necessity due to a split in primary and general funds. Allegedly, their primary spending had left them with around $50,000 owed to vendors.

They raised $30,000 to pay these bills, but at the end of the quarter, they were still $20,000 down on what they owed. Costs like these don’t show up on reports until they’re actually paid, but they thought it was important to get them out of the way sooner rather than later. So Harris ponied up.

The veracity of these claims will be proven by next quarter’s report. Why? Because if the loan was to repay debts, Harris should have shown $20,000 in disbursements on March 31. He didn’t. We won’t know until July whether he did the first week in April.

Now, others believe that the loan is a case of Harris playing games with his financial totals for the sake of a snazzier press release headline.

Frank Kratovil filed early on April 12, while Harris did so three days later on April 15, ostensibly giving him enough time to see what Kratovil had. Kratovil originally reported raising $190,000 and having $214,000 on hand, but that number was off due to some expenditures they accidentally left out of the first version, and was closer to $182,000.

Without the loan, Harris would have finished the quarter with $185,000 on hand, with $380,000 raised instead of the $400,000 they had in their press release.

But this scenario seems a little far-fetched. Even if Harris saw Kratovil’s early reports, they would have known they doubled Kratovil in fundraising and were only slightly behind in cash on hand – exactly what they were hoping for.

Would they really risk backdating a $20,000 check for… nothing, really? It’s not likely.

An alternate – and more practical theory – might be that their donor base has dried up. They’ve raised $1.5 million and spent the lion’s share of it. Are they worried people will think his funds are falling off?

The answer to that is, ‘No,’ for two reasons: 1. Reports show their fundraising has been steady (their general election fund was quite meager at the start of the quarter) and 2. This shows that he’s not the least bit scared to dip into his own pockets for leverage, if that’s what it came to.

Another benefit of the $20,000 loan is that well-heeled donors and PACs can contribute to help pay that off, while still contributing money to the general campaign funds. So it’s not such a bad move for Harris to have made.

The fact remains that after the primary, he could have used his general election fund to pay the $20,000 debt to the vendors, but the campaign was seemingly reluctant to do so as it would make them look slightly less competitive. So the general election fund remains in tact but they are still saddled with a $20,000 debt.

He made a strategic decision allowing him to raise more money and keep the campaign looking healthy.

So was it vanity? Yeah, in part. But it was still a pretty savvy maneuver.

WALLY EDGE can be reached via email at politickermd@aol.com.

Related topics: Andy Harris, Frank Kratovil, MD-01, Campain Finance

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Comments

Dr. Andy

posted by Johnson Leneir

For those who didn't see it, Dr. Andy had some remarkable insights on Jailbird Joe's blog the other day http://sbynews.blogspot.com/2008_04_21_archive.html.

Like an insight provide to him by that master of economic thought, Senator John McCain, who suggested a moratorium on gas taxes through the summer. So what dows our Andy do? He proposes a special session to have a Maryland moratorium! Mmmm, mmm, mmm. From one Nobel prize winner in economics to the other.

So here we have it...Andy is coming up with policy now. Well, as I said, what he is doing is riding on the brain waves of McCain, who admits that matters of the economy are not his strong point. So a good place for Andy to start stealing ideas, no?

So Andy P. spends weeks and weeks in Annapolis, biding his time and chomping at the bit to get out there and do his $15 fundraiser, and within days of the session ending he hears Grandpa Munster suggest an elimination of the federal gas tax through the summer and comes up with the brainstorm of going into special session to do it here in Maryland! Gee, Andy, ol’ chap, maybe if you would have had an original thought in that noggin’ of yours prior to the session ending we could have been impressed by your leadership, your farsightedness. But no. You let someone else come up with the idea, and then wait to suggest a special session, which would cost the Maryland taxpayer scores of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands, so you can grandstand on what a strong anti-tax guy you are.

So let’s think about this for a moment. If the average driver drives 1500 miles per month, and their vehicle gets 20 miles to the gallon, they will save about $25 per month, or $75 through Labor Day. Heck, if you want to help the average Maryland family, just advocate one less meal at Outback Steakhouse for the family and you won’t even need your buddy the Governor to call a special session for that. But what about the roads and other uses for that tax money? You suggest that funds could be transferred from other sources in Annapolis. Did you not just sit through a painful budget session, Andy? Is the State flush with cash and you guys just aren’t telling the voters about it? And speaking of painful budget sessions, you guys screamed pretty darned loud when new taxes were created to cover the shortfalls that Bobby left since he raided every rainy day fund the state had (and one would think that Bobby could have found the scratch somewhere along the line for a decent haircut), but when the Republicans submitted their budget, you did not advocate for one single tax to be cut out or rolled back. The mantra of “we need to cut taxes” to you guys is a great headline, but when it comes to balancing a budget with reduced taxes you never step up to make the hard choices.

So you want to go to Washington and cut taxes. Cool idea, bro. No one wants to pay taxes. But as you point out, we have roads to build, and as you probably don’t realize we have an electrical grid infrastructure that is ancient, schools that are falling down, college tuition levels in the stratosphere, a misguided war in Iraq that costs us $5000 per second, Iraq War veterans coming home to a VA that doesn’t serve their needs, a defense budget that is larger than the next largest 21 nations COMBINED, and on and on. Taxes aren’t the problem Andy. Spending is the problem. You seem to be clearly comfortable with China buying a huge chunk of US Treasury securities to fund our nation’s operation, but you know, something about that just leaves me feeling a bit uneasy. How about you, Andy? Meantime the Chinese are shipping toys with lead and tainted blood thinner Heparin to our children and our sick. You OK with that Andy? After all, you are a free market kind of guy, right? Should we let the Chinese basically take over our economy and poison our kids with lead Snuffleupagusses and sick people on Heparin, Andy? Next time you go to Wal-Mart…oops, excuse me, I mean Nordstroms, see how many things are made in the USA versus China. Foreman says these jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back. 1984, bro. Not George Orwell, either. That one was Bruce Springsteen.

By the way, if you think Frank Kratovil is a liberal, time to get a new dictionary. Fact of the matter is you are way closer to being a fascist than he is a liberal. But from what I have read about him, he is too much of a gentleman to get down in the gutter with you.

Oh, and you mention that demigod Reagan? His tax cuts led to the largest deficits in history (until the current clown, of course.) His desire to cut government programs stalled pretty much immediately, so not only did he not eliminate the Department of Energy and Department of Education, he created the Department of Veteran Affairs, one of the largest federal agencies out there…sort of like W creating the Department of Homeland Security, no? Social Security was vastly expanded under his presidency, and he signed off on a plan for temporary resident status for illegals who had been here 5 years and free of a criminal past. So as you pine away for Ronnie, watch out for what you wish for.

One last thing. What’s up with giving your campaign $20k on the last day of the quarter, if you were oh so successful raising money? Smells stinky, Andy. Bad strategy to pump up the numbers. Maybe Wally's right and it was clever, but I dunno. Why lie when it is much easier to tell the truth? Or can you even tell the difference?

04/23/08 6:43 pm