Ok – Instead of responding to the TIF piece in the Isthmus, I was convinced to look at the campaign finance reports instead. After 5 hours, here’s what I can tell you.
(Slightly edited to fix a few errors I found.)
I only looked at reports for Claussius, Deadman, Pham-Remmele, Schumacher and Skidmore. They seemed to have the highest amount of contributions of interest. After looking at these 5 reports, here is what I can tell you.
1. There is a conduit missing. There are several firefighters that are listed on the reports as contributing through a conduit, but there is no conduit report listed on the City website.
Clausius had conduit contributions from mystery conduit from the following three people:
Che Stedman (Oregon) $100
Todd Shortreed (Waunakee) $100
Michael Stich (DeForest) $100
I’m aware of this happeneing on a few more reports and I will report them as I sort them out.
2. The conduits and candidates didn’t quite get their reporting right, unless I missed something. There are some people who reported conduit money but there are no reports. In other instances, conduits reported contributions that don’t show up on the reports.
Mark Deadman
Reports a contribution from
Larry Gleasman $50 and
Phile Salkin (Verona) $50
as being from a conduit, but it doesn’t show up on the conduit reports (likely the Realtors).
Note: I believe these contributions should have shown up on the pre-primary report. WRA letter dated 1/31/07, report says 2/13/07.
Michael Schumacher
Reports a contribution from
Larry Gleasman $50
Note: I believe this contribution should have shown up on the pre-primary report. WRA letter dated 1/31/07, report says 2/06/07.
John Deininger $40
Jennifer Mirscke (Sun Prairie) $25
Peter Sveum (Stoughton) $50
Kathy Zastrow $60
Lisabeth Weirich $60
as being from a conduit, but it doesn’t show up on the conduit reports (likely the Realtors). And my apoligies if I spelled things wrong the handwriting was hard to read.
Great Madison Chamber of Commerce – Direct Givers
Report a Contribution to Mark Deadman from
Phil Blake $100 and
Mari Wolter $100
but the contributions don’t show up on Mark Deadman’s reports.
Report a contribution to Michael Schumacher from
Phil Blake $100
but the contribution doesn’t show up on Michael Schumacher’s report.
3. Some campaigns got high dollar amounts or large percentages of their money from organized special interests. (I know, no big surprise really, but the numbers are higher than even I expected).
Here’s a brief (hopefully accurate) analysis of a few campaigns – but it doesn’t include any of the late money.
Clausius
- Total – $5859.53
- Average Contribution – $142.52
- Average Contribution without $1600 of the candidates own money – $106.49
- $2,375 from the real estate and development community which makes 41% of the dollars and 57% of the contributors
- 64% of the dollars came from contributions that were more than $100
- 25% of the dollars came from outside the city
- 43% of the contributions came from outside the city
- 9% of the money came from the Chamber of Commerce conduit
- 3% of the money came from the Realtors conduit
- 18% of the money came from conduits
Deadman
- Total – $8,092.85
- Average Contribution – $49.05
- Average Contribution without $500 of the candidates own money – $46.30
- $4,160 from the real estate and development community which makes 51% of the dollars and 27% of the contributors
- 78% of the dollars came from contributions that were more than $100
- 26% of the dollars came from outside the city
- 18% of the contributions came from outside the city
- 30% of the money came from the Chamber of Commerce conduit
- 16% of the money came from the Realtors conduit
- 46% of the money came from conduits
Pham-Remmele
- Total – $10,109
- Average Contribution – $70.20
- Average Contribution without $800 of the candidates own money – $65.10
- $2,750 from the real estate and development community which makes 27% of the dollars and 25% of the contributors
- 42% of the dollars came from contributions that were more than $100
- 22% of the dollars came from outside the city
- 20% of the contributions came from outside the city
- 17% of the money came from the Chamber of Commerce conduit
- 7% of the money came from the Realtors conduit
- 24% of the money came from conduits
Schmumacher
- Total – $9,416.42
- Average Contribution – $97.08
- Average Contribution without $1,000 of the candidates own money – $87.67
- $3,614 from the real estate and development community which makes 38% of the dollars and 42% of the contributors
- 57% of the dollars came from contributions that were more than $100
- 28% of the dollars came from outside the city
- 28% of the contributions came from outside the city
- 21% of the money came from the Chamber of Commerce conduit
- 12% of the money came from the Realtors conduit
- 23% of the money came from conduits
Paul Skidmore
- Total – $3,817.85
- Average Contribution – $119.31
- $3,030 from the real estate and development community which makes 79% of the dollars and 59% of the contributors
- 80% of the dollars came from contributions that were more than $100
- 39% of the dollars came from outside the city
- 34% of the contributions came from outside the city
- 12% of the money came from the Chamber of Commerce conduit
- 3% of the money came from the Realtors conduit
- 15% of the money came from conduits
4. The Realtors have given “late money” (we won’t see who it was from until the July reports are done) to the following candidates in the following amounts:
Michael Schumacher = $575
Mark Deadman = $625
Thuy Pham-Remmele = $500
Michael Schumacher = $305
5. Chamber of Commerce has given “late money”.
Michael Schumacher = $725
Thuy Pham-Remmele = $575
Troy Theil = $600
Michael Schumacher = $450
Thuy Pham-Remmele = $325
Jed Sanborn = $375
So, more to come, as soon as I find more time to dig through these numbers – I have to get to work by noon today. Hopefully, my info is error free, but this is not an easy task to try to untangle all of this. If you see an error, feel free to let me know.
