5 Days until the New Election: Smith's August Finances

As we discussed yesterday, this has become a $1 million Cherokee Chief campaign .  In the last few days before the election, we’ll spend some time talking about where that money is coming from and where it is being spent. We’ll start with Smith today and move to Baker later. 

Smith raised $154,108.99 in the most recent reporting period, including a $38,000 loan.  He had about 132 donors, for an average donation of $879 or so. Donors of note include Barry Derryberry, an OKC area attorney, Council member Jack Baker and former speaker of the house for Oklahoma Chris Benge.  The biggest expenses were $18,924 for telephone (which turns out not to be long distance calls to Uzbekistan, but actually phone polling), $35,106.24 for printing (mailers anyone?) and $23,131.50 for compensation to individuals.

The polling was done by Cole Hardgrave Snodgrass, who we talked about earlier.  He even spent $5,247 on office supplies, which is a lot of staplers and paper clips!

Smith’s total expenditures were $110,992.26, which leaves Smith with $42,616.73 in cash as of September 15. We’ll plan on Baker’s finance report tomorrow, but if our tribal court or the federal court come up with something soon, you’ll understand if we push it back, right?

6 Days Until the New Election: Barenaked Ladies Edition

If I had a million dollars.... I'd build a tree fort in our yard!

If you had a million dollars what would you do with it?  If you answered run  two campaigns  for Principal Chief, you would need every penny.  Between Smith and Baker, more than $1,171,000 is invested in this campaign.  

The Tulsa World did us a semi-favor by posting some information about the latest campaign finance reports, but they managed to not post the actual reports online, so those are still to come. However, we can get to the basics now and the details later.

In August, Smith raised $ 102,979.12 and loaned himself $38,000.    That makes his fundraising total (our math, not the World’s)  $494,544.19, and his loan total of $78,301.91 for a total available to his campaign so far of: $572,648.10.  Which sounds like a lot of money, and it is, until you realize Baker’s stack is just as big.

Between August 16 and September 15, Baker raised $152,851.97, bringing his fundraising total to $444,297.59.  With his loan total of $155,000, the total money available to his campaign so far is $599,297.59.

So we’ve got what has to be the first million dollar campaign in Cherokee Nation history, and we still don’t have a chief!  We’ll post more on the campaign finance reports (and links to the reports themselves) of both candidate  soon.

12 Days Until the New Election: Betting the Farm

The Tulsa World did a finance story over the weekend about the campaign, and got some answers to questions we’ve been wondering about ourselves.

They noticed that Baker has lost money on his furniture business, but still managed to loan himself $155,000.  Baker told the World that he was “plowing a good portion of my lifetime profits into trying to serve the Cherokee people.”

That’s the first time we’ve heard a peep from Baker about how he’s paying for the election, so many thanks to the World for getting Baker on the record.   The World also solved the mystery of how Baker’s income is less than his actual council salary.  They say “much of his $36,000 council-member salary is withheld for tax purposes or goes directly into a retirement fund.”

Smith has loaned himself $40,000, which we’ve covered before as well.  He says that money comes from a loan.  He tells the World:  "For my adult years, I've worked hard, paid my taxes and provided for my family. I do not have the means to self-fund my campaign."

So it looks like both candidates are betting the farm on this one.  The stakes are not just high for the Nation, but for the candidates themselves, which may be a contributing factor in the high emotions surrounding this election.

Election Limbo Day 47- Smith Contributions

Yesterday, we talked about Baker’s contributors for the July reporting period, so now let’s check out Smith's.

First off, he started with a balance of $54,348 in the bank, and reported $133,730 in total funds raised.  He also made his second loan to the campaign… his first was $100, back in April, but this one was more substantial: $14,000.

Smith’s contributors include $727.95 from Susan Chapman Plumb, the nominee for the election commission, who, as we reported yesterday, also gave to Baker.

Smith raised money from people in the political arena: Tulsa County Commissioner John Smaligo gave Smith $200, former state insurance commissioner Kim Holland gave $500, former Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor gave $1000, former congressman Brad Carson pitched in for $2500 and former Chief Ross Swimmer gave $2000.

He also snagged $5000 donation from Jim Carson of Stilwell, who has served on different boards at Cherokee Nation for a long time, and Howard Barnett, who is in charge of OSU-Tulsa.  The list is long, as it would have to be, to cover the $133,730 raised.  That may be the single largest fundraising month for either candidate for the entire campaign.

Smith’s fundraising total through the whole campaign $378,674.96. On top of his $14,100 loans, Smith has had a total of $392,774.94 to spend on his campaign thus far. 

Election Limbo Day 46- Campaign Finance & Baker

With all the recounts, threecounts, court decisions and runoffs, we never got around to the campaign finance reports for July for Smith and Baker.  Since the August reports are due already, we thought we’d play catch up.  For those of you who are new, we’ve analyzed their campaign finance reports since they first started coming out in April.  You can see them in our archives.

April

May

June

Over the next four days, we’ll go through the July reports and see where the candidates got their money and what they spent it on.  We’ll post the reports for you to see, since the July ones never popped up on the Cherokee Phoenix like the other ones did.

And just so you know where we’re going, we’re going to do Baker contributions first, then Smith’s, then Smith’s expenditures and then Bakers.  That’ll be four days worth.  Depending on what ever else happens, we may post these over the next four days or spread them out a little, but don’t worry, they are coming soon.

So, let's start with Baker’s contributions.   He started the reporting period with $13,507.08 in the bank.  He raised $17,553.72 from others and loaned his campaign $40,000.  That brings his total loans so far to $155,000… as we’ve said before, that’s a huge commitment from the Mr. and Mrs. Baker, who report a combined income of $41,000 to the IRS.

Notable contributions include $500 from Susan Chapman Plumb (nominated by the council for the election commission) and her husband.  Susan’s dad, Gary Chapman, gave Baker $1,000.  UKB lawyer Dianne Barker Harrold coughed up $150.  One of our readers and occasional commenters chipped in $2,427 (we won’t name names, but claim it if you want).  Chuck Hoskin gave $97.  We’re pretty sure that’s Chuck H. Jr., because he’s listed as a lawyer and Chuck H. Sr. was an educator and is now a state rep, but that’s just our speculation.  It’s clear that both Sr. and Jr.  support Baker, so it probably doesn’t matter which one handed over the $97.

Baker’s total contributions from others so far, $191,628.17 (including $20,000 from his family).

That’s on top of the $155,000 loan, which puts the total money in his campaign so far at $346,646.96.

Coming soon… Who’s giving to Smith?

Election Limbo Day 35: That’s Your Opinion

Opinions are like uvulas: everybody’s got one.  But when the Attorney General trots out her opinion about the rules for the next election, we guess we best take notice.

New yesterday, but kinda drowned out by the new election, is the idea that newly registered voters won’t get to elect the Principal Chief.  The only voters who were eligible to vote last time around will get to vote in September. 

On several occasions in this election, we’ve heard Baker and Smith both tell us that every vote counts.  We found out of course, during the recount and court process, that there were some votes that weren’t counted, (challenge ballots) and some votes that Baker didn’t want counted (the mysteriously vanishing votes from the recount).

The election commission apparently has more than 3,000 voters who want to vote, but registered after the deadline of March 31.  The Attorney General of the Cherokee Nation interprets the election law to read that the end of March is the deadline for the whole election year, not just for the general election.  So if you are one of those folks who got their voter registration forms in a day late, April Fools.  You still can’t vote this time around.

The other opinion said that campaign finance rules from the first election still apply.  That should make Baker happy, since he asked the Supreme Court to decide things that way a couple of weeks ago.  Both candidates had their share of donors who reached the $5000 contribution limit  (see our campaign finance blogs), but this is arguably worse for Smith, because there are no limitations on what Baker’s biggest contributor can give:  Baker has sunk more than $115,000 cash into his campaign.   

At least we know some of the rules for the upcoming election.  Now its our job as citizens to go vote.

10 Days Until the Election- Accusations & Truth

More than a week ago, we addressed Baker’s allegation that Cherokee Nation employees were breaking federal law by sending a letter to other employees asking them to support Smith with their votes and money.

The U.S. Attorney told the Cherokee Nation the same day this was not the case, move along, nothing to see here.

At the time we said “Hopefully, from here on out, he’ll use the truth to educate Cherokee voters. Maybe (Baker) doesn’t like employees supporting Smith, but he shouldn’t accuse them of breaking the law if they haven’t done so. Maybe that one-day "investigation" will be the end of it, but for some reason we don’t think so.”

Boy, were we right!  Since then, Baker has sent out mailers, done some pretty spooky sounding robo-calls and apparently taken out radio ads along the same theme.

A lot of people, if they were told by federal prosecutors to stop accusing people of committing crimes when the people hadn’t done anything wrong, would stop.  Not Baker, apparently.  Instead, he’s kept repeating the story, and finally got the folks at FOX 23 to bite yesterday. At least part way.  

The hard hitting FOX news journalists told you what we told you 9 days ago:  there is no violation of federal law.  They did a story anyway, where Baker said, even if it’s not illegal, it’s wrong.  Since we care about the truth here, we have a little rule that says you lose the moral high ground and the ability to say what is right and what is wrong when you wrongfully accuse Cherokee people of violating federal law in public. Especially when you do it repeatedly after the experts have weighed in and said you're wrong (we're talking about the lawyers here, not us)!

The FOX story lets Baker tell his side of the story and references employees who said they were afraid to talk on camera.  Then they let Smith respond, and he says, basically, that he’ll abide by the Constitution and Cherokee employees have no reason to fear for their job. 

We’ll let their story stand for what it is, though the reporter waving around a piece of paper in front of the hospital looks kinda funny.  The real TRUTH is that the story shouldn’t have happened, if Baker would have just taken the word of the U.S. Attorney and moved on down the road to talk about important issues, rather than attacking employees who support Smith.

24 Days Until the Election- Finger Pointing over Money

Both campaigns have recently pointed fingers at the other guys’ campaign contributors.  Baker says he wants “to keep Chad’s corporate donors from buying this election.”  He says his campaign is “scaring the pants off Chad Smith’s inner circle of executives and rich big wigs.”

Well, we can’t verify how scared they are, where their pants are, or the size of their wigs. And, as we have noted before, corporate donors are illegal, so we’re assuming if these folks truly were “corporate donors,” Baker would have reported it to the Election Commission and they would have dealt with it.

But, what we can do is simple math. 

Over the two reporting periods so far, Baker has had 137 people donate to his campaign, and they have given a combined total $129,328.28.  That works out to just over $944 a donor on average.

Over the same two reporting periods, Smith has raised $185,715.86 from 226 donors. That comes to an average contribution of under $822 per donor.

Baker has also loaned his campaign nearly $70,000, which could buy a nice size wig, if one were so inclined, but that is not factored into his average per donor give.

Overall, Baker has had nearly $200,000 to spend so far on his campaign, nearly $90,000 coming from himself and his family.  With those resources, he has raised more than Smith. 

Smith’s donor list does have a lot of people listed as executives.  Some are recognizable as Cherokee Nation employees or people who work for Cherokee Nation’s businesses or boards, so Baker is right about people in Smith’s inner circle giving to Smith’s campaign.

But let’s be real. Neither campaign is being financed by poor people on social security.  And yes, it’s possible someone is trying to ‘buy the election.’  But, we’ll leave it up to you to figure out who.

27 Days Until the Election: Baker Raises Almost $34,000 in Latest Reporting

Wrapping up our section on campaign finance, at least for now, we’ll finish up with Baker’s contributors.

For the second reporting period in a row, Baker was his own biggest supporter, loaning his campaign exactly $7018.49.  He raised a total of  $33,895.13, including his loan.  His total loans to the campaign now total nearly $70,000. 

Baker has a total of 44 donors (including himself), with an average donation of about $770 each.  If you take out his loan, which is probably fair, the average shrinks to $625 per donor.  Baker raised a little less than half of what Smith raised for this reporting period, after outraising and outspending him for the first reporting period. 

One interesting contribution was $10 from a lawyer in Ohio. We’re not sure, but that contribution, while not approaching chuckle-worthiness of the donation to Smith from Harry Potter, still seems pretty hilarious. We don’t begrudge anyone giving, because it’s their money and everyone has a budget, but our mental image of lawyers is more along the lines of guys lighting cigars with $100 bills, not trying to influence elections with $10.  We guess we should repent for buying into the ugly stereotype.  But still, $10?  Is the cheapest lawyer in the world?  $10? Really? 

A few moments for comparison:  Baker has no anonymous campaign donations listed, while Smith has had almost $500.  These are perfectly legal (see yesterday's blog) according to Cherokee Nation Election Law, but we thought we should mention it.

Baker’s average donation this reporting period is $625.  Smith’s was a little more than $700.  Smith had 111 donors to Baker’s 43.

Baker and his family now have loaned/given approximately $90,000 to his election campaign.

Smith and his family have loaned/given $250 to his election campaign.

On the reporting date, they both had relatively equal cash on hand:  $17,206.89 for Baker and $21,989.45 for Smith.

With the election less than a month away, it will be interesting to see how the candidates spend their remaining cash, how much more they raise down the stretch run, and who they raise it from.  That’s all the Truth we can handle for today.  Check back tomorrow for more truth, and let us know if there is truth the Cherokee people need to know!  We’ll get it out there.

52 Days Until the Election- Campaign Contributions

You can tell a lot about a candidate by how he/she raises their money. And when you see campaign stuff, sometimes you wonder, who is paying for all that?

Cherokee Nation law requires candidates for public officials to be transparent and report their campaign contributions and expenditures to the election commission and then that information is made available to the public. Additionally, Cherokee Nation prohibits campaign contributions from businesses/corporations and caps the amount an individual can give to a candidate’s campaign at $5,000.00.

On April 15, 2011, all candidates running for office in the June 25^th election were required to file their contributions/expenditures as of March 31^st. Links to all those records are available online by clicking here.

We’ve been looking at both Chad Smith’s and Bill John Baker’s filings and will point out some highlights here, but I would encourage you to look at them for yourself and all other candidates for whom you will have the opportunity to vote.

As of the April 15^th filing, Chad Smith had raised $107,539.45 in campaign income. He also reported that he himself gave $100.00 in addition to the above amount, and that is listed as a “loan.”  (It appears that any money directly from the candidate’s pocket is considered a loan on this form.) From reading over each individual donation, it appears none of the money Chief Smith has raised has come from his or his wife’s families. Click here for Chad Smith's report

As of the April 15^th filing, Bill John Baker had raised $102,451.64 in campaign income. He also reported that he himself has put in an additional $62,000.00 of his own money, and that is listed as a “loan.” From reading over each individual donation, it appears that $20,000 of Mr. Baker’s campaign income has come from his family, a little less than 20% of total amount he has raised from contributors in total. Add that to what he himself has put into the campaign, Mr. Baker and his family have contributed $82,000 of their own money to this race so far. Click here for Bill John Baker's report

On May 15^th, candidates are required file additional reports on their campaign contributions and expenditures from April 1st-30th.   Tomorrow, we will look at how the campaigns have spent their money so far.

As always, we are only looking for the truth.  If there are things in these reports that need to be revealed, let us know and we’ll put the truth out there.