Noodlin' Around Jason Carter's Financial Disclosure Forms at the State Ethics Commission Website

There's not much more fun to be had than to dig around in candidate financial disclosure forms over at the State Ethics Commission Website. They are chock-a-block full of interesting items because it's all about the money. Who gave it, where they live, who got paid and how although not necessarily for what and how much came in versus how much went out. Considering the importance attached to a candidates financial standings by the traditional media as well as the blog-o-sphere, here at Bludgeon & Skewer we've decided to do our dead level best to provide the readership with a throughly slanted investigation of the latest info on the Carter Campaign.

For you do-it-yourselfers, the place to start is here. For the rest of you slackers here's a list of tasty tidbits gleaned from the Summary report:

Jason Carter is a prodigious fundraiser, he's brought in $220,000 for this race since declaring back in December. It's got to be a Georgia State record for a Special Election, hell, it may be a state record for a regular Senate election and he's not done yet.

Jason can also spend the cash, he's dropped $83,000 which more that his opponents have raised. The question is, what's the moola being spent on? At a $1.51 a pop there aren't that many Jason yard signs out there.

Bottom line: The Carter campaign is sitting on $136,000 which is plenty for the GOTV effort as well as a respectable amount of walking around money.

Tasty Tidbits from the Contributions report for 1 JAN 2010 to 31 MAR 2010:

The Carter Campaign has a total of 479 donors that made the big time last quarter. These are the cats that donated over $101 and so have their own special place on the report in order to comply with regulations.

Of the 479 major donors, 55 of them list Decatur as the address of record. That's an amazing 12-13% of the major donor base residing or at least working in the district. Yeah there's a bunch of Atlanta Zip codes over on the west side of the district, but we decided to just look for Decatur addresses. Proper slant for slant's sake.

There are 161 attorneys listed on the major donor form out of 479 major donors for the last quarter. That's right at 32% of his donor base. We didn't count the lawyers because there are just few of them and you never want to mix lawyers with attorneys.

There are 38 major donors that threw $1,000 into the pot, one major donor that tossed in $1,500 and 12 guys or gals that threw down $2,400 each. Major Major Donor total slice is $68,300. So his NBFF's account for 47-48% of the funding pulled in (138K) and are about 7-8% of the major donor base. Whose phone calls do you think Jason takes?

Some tasty tidbits from the expenditures report:

Jason is doing 'bidness' with the brightest minds in Birmingham Ala-damn-bama. World renowned Anzalone Liszt Research. Inc has pulled about $32,000 out of Jason's warchest for polling operations and you would suppose a little opposition research as well. The reality is that these guys are heavy hitters, big artillery and major league successes, just look at this quote from thier front page:

Anzalone Liszt had a great 2008! We helped deliver the crucial Southern states of Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia to President Barack Obama. For the second straight cycle we helped defeat an incumbent U.S. Senator by electing Kay Hagan in North Carolina. Additionally our firm helped protect 14 Democratic congressional incumbents, flip two Republican open seats (AL-02 / IL-11) and defeat two Republican incumbents (NV-03 / NC-08). We helped elect statewide candidates in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and West Virginia and helped sustain Democratic majorities in the Illinois, North Carolina, and Colorado State Senates. Congratulations to all our winners!

They're like President Obama's Pizza delivery guys! Just order up a state and tip the driver when they deliver. The sad part is that $32K won't get you on the front page of their website. You gotta click through three different levels to find current customer Jason and his name isn't linked back to his campaign! Outrageous!

Jason's taking care of the staff as well, the Campaign Finance Director collected a cool $7,500 for the quarter as well as a couple of hundred bucks for stamps and stuff. That sounds like a lot of money but it's only 30K a year and the job ain't gonna last a year. We never sweat stuff like that over here in Liberty Land because we don't pay nobody nothing. Work Free or Walk!

The guys and gals down at the Influence Factory in Atlanta copped $16,848 for whatever services they provided. Presumably influencing stuff.

So Jason's spent $56K out of $83K on pollsters, money managers and influence peddlers. I'm sure the rest was for coffee and doughnuts for his army of volunteer door to door canvassers, phone bank operators and yard sign installers. Or not.

So that's todays glance at the Carter Campaign Finance reports over at the State Ethics Commission website. Be sure to drop back by as we will looking at them again in the future!