John Clifton, a fellow member of the Queens and Manhattan Libertarian Party’s has sent around a breakdown of the Ron Paul for President 2008 campaign’s expenditures for the 4th quarter of 2007. I’ve not confirmed the data with the FEC but as he points out there are some questionable expenditures and I can only hope that the campaign will respond to these statements.

A very detailed breakdown of Paul’s 4th quarter
campaign spending, from a post on ronpaul forums:

Where $17M went in the 4th Qtr

These are the major category expenses from the 4th
Quarter FEC report for the RPPCC (taken from the raw
FEC data files and then sucked into a DB and totaled.)

Bulk Mail Printing/Processing/Postage ……..
4,329,007.44
Radio Spot Expense ………………………
3,092,519.89
Television Spot Expense/Production ………..
2,192,292.56
Telecommunications ………………………
1,514,587.03
Television Spot Expense ……………………
906,702.32
Salaries …………………………………
532,929.25
Credit Card Contributions Processing Fee …….
483,249.47
Signs/Sign Supplies ……………………….
451,796.19
Payroll Tax Expense ……………………….
394,600.75
Airline Travel ……………………………
380,840.50
Reimbursement Expenses …………………….
328,504.73
Consulting-Political Field Work …………….
320,851.92
Campaign Shirts …………………………..
247,442.55
Freight/Shipping Expenses ………………….
220,911.91
List Rental/Purchase ………………………
220,046.04
Freight ………………………………….
206,369.07
Bulk Printing-Slim Jims ……………………
202,890.00
Bulk Mail Postage\Processing ……………….
200,020.99
Bulk Printing …………………………….
160,250.28
Campaign Buttons/Stickers/Etc ………………
125,910.00
———————————————————–
TOTAL …………………………………
16,511,722.89
That’s it for the main expense data folks.

Everthing else below is my “educated guesses” based on
some further (more detailed) analysis of the numbers
BEHIND the data above.

DO NOT READ ANY FARTHER if you do not want to know.

Ok, for those who ARE interested (or like myself, NEED
to know this stuff) — well, unfortunately I *think*
that I now understand why the campaign was NOT so
forthcoming with where the money went.

Before you panic — It does NOT look like there was
any philandering anywhere, but there definitely WERE
some major blunders and bad choices made. IMHO, it is
a case of inexperience and incompetence followed by
some solid CYA.

The BIGGEST Expense item shown there is the $4.3M for
printing/processing/postage — and this all appears to
have been spent with a single firm out of New
Hampshire (Tier 3 Advertising, Inc.) — it consisted
of 24 payments from 10/15 thru 12/28 (Avg $176,640).

That looks to me to be a series of MAJOR mailings to
virtually everyone in the state. (This was a HUGE
EXPENSE it could be argued received little ROI in
terms of votes. However, it *might* also argues as a
cause of the high donations from NH, so it may
actually have balanced out. I haven’t done totals and
quarter % comparisons on donations from NH… so no
idea yet.) Since NH has a population of a little over
1.2 million — if we estimate a general household size
of 2.5 people that gives us about 450,000 households
– so about $10 per household was spent on printing &
mailings. Since the only thing that I am aware of that
was mailed was the large 12page, full color bio book,
it seems like someone got snookered on printing costs!
Whoever made THIS decision was thinking either that it
would produce a 1st place, AND/OR they thought they
were running a Romney-style $100M campaign.
Regardless, major faux pas.

The second biggest expense was the payment of $3M for
Radio spots, of which some $2.8M was spent with a firm
called “Direct Results Radio” — consisting of 11
payments from 10/11 thru 12/27 (Avg $260,985). Know
way of knowing exactly where this was targeted, but IA
and NH are the only obvious choices (possibly some SC,
but who knows?)

Third biggest expense, and perhaps the second most
troubling after the $4.2M mailers, is the $2.1M in
television production costs. Since the LION’S SHARE of
this $ 1,558,243 was paid to a single firm (Creative
Cable Television Inc. of California) in 5 payments
from 11/08 thru 12/13 (Avg $311,648) — it seems the
initial “dopy” ads (and the Iowa “Special”???) were
REALLY EXPENSIVE. Only explanation I can give is that
someone got snookered, BIG TIME.

So… from all of that, I am willing to posit SEVERAL
things:

1) OTHER than the things I’ve already cited (which
granted are enough to sink a ship) spending looks to
be relatively well managed. (Spending a quarter of a
million on campaign shirts — 1/2 the amount you spent
on campaign signs — seems a bit much, but if this
included the many clothing items available through the
store… well, it wouldn’t be high on MY priority
list, but it is NOT “insanely” wasteful, maybe just a
bit irresponsible). Amazingly, salaries were pretty
frugal, so they didn’t go “nutso” in hiring gobs of
people, and I would venture to say that MOST of the
campaign staff are good people earning less than they
would make at other jobs. Other expenses look pretty
appropriate as well (people are NOT eating “surf N
turf” every night on an expense tab).

2) UNLESS the big “Creative Cable Television” expense
was a some 5 month-ahead prepaid media-buy for
February 5th… then as an EDUCATED GUESS, I would say
it is as many of us suspected after the initial set of
TV ads were released (”He’s catching on”???)
…Someone sold the campaign management a set of
“Emperor’s Clothes” regarding those ads; and the
campaign was just to sheepish to admit it. (The
company that produced the ads — CCTV looks to be a
small-time outfit that hit the proverbial “jackpot”
and found someone with a certain word on their
forehead! Their web page alone is atrocious
http://www.creativecabletv.com/ and should have been
enough to warn anyone competent that this company was
NOT a high-grade professional outfit worthy of $1M
productions… their portfolio does NOT provide any
candidate names or ad samples, WHY NOT? )

3) BUT after 12/13 the bleeding stopped — the
campaign had apparently learned its lesson and been
properly chastised. Because while there are several
additional “Television Spot Expense/Production” –
they are all with OTHER companies where the costs are
very reasonable ($7K, $20K, etc) and some of them even
have solid looking websites, “EFX Media” for example
(though why someone would name their company “R/S/M”
– as one of the other firms did — in the age of the
internet strikes me as not too bright — but at least
they were a good value.)

4) Jesse Benton is an either an idiot OR he was
majorly lied to (CYA) and hung out to dry — and
didn’t bother to verify anything before he spoke on
the RPR interview — while he was essentially correct
about the campaign having around $8M in cash-on-hand
at the end of the quarter, he was WAY OFF on where the
money went. It did NOT go to pay for charter flights
for Dr. Paul. (Airline Travel expenses at $380,000 are
NOT a major expense when compared to two other
categories and payments to only a few firms that cost
over $7M in total.)

5) Again, unless I’m wrong and it was an unheard of
4-month ahead pre-planned prepaid media buy for Feb
5th (and I’d need to see the invoices before I’d
believe THAT) then ONE OR MORE HEADS should have
rolled over the TV ad debacle, and the ridiculous NH
mailer expenses — though actually they never should
have had authority to spend that kind of cash in the
first place (they essentially spent MORE than the
ENTIRE 3rd Qtr donations on the NH mailers and the TV
Ad debacle.)

6) Jonathan Bydlak was NOT lying when he claimed the
campaign was nearly out of cash around Thanksgiving.
(What he was NOT clear on was the REAL reasons why…
I would venture to say he didn’t know, probably STILL
doesn’t know.)

7) While the Mailing thing was a much BIGGER expense
than the TV spot creation spending, mailing costs
(especially for fancy flyers) are NOT cheap and it
seems like someone just over-committed without getting
proper costs ahead of time (or maybe as I posited
before, they thought they were running Obama’s or
Romney’s campaign? …dunno). Only folks who live in
NH can know how many pieces — OTHER than the 12 page
full-color bio book — were printed and mailed and
what type they were, etc. There is definitely room in
$4.2M to hide just about anything, but it seems MOST
likely to be just a REALLY bad choice (and maybe bad
management in overpaying for some things, or paying
for first class rather than bulk or ?)

8) Someone from California should probably check into
this “Creative Cable Television Inc.” and make certain
there is NO direct association with any campaign
staffers or other behind-the-scenes shenanigans going
on here (hey, it’s not exactly unheard of for
campaigns to have people “launder” money to themselves
and “friends” or “relatives” — I see no evidence here
of anything OTHER the campaign being suckered, but who
knows… it does happen.)

Well, that pretty much does it for me tonight. Some of
you may hate me for posting this (especially the
analysis — which granted is just educated guesses) –
but hey, I’m just the data analyst and the messenger.
I didn’t sign any contracts or make any agreements or
cut any of the checks above.

And I’m not exactly a happy camper right now myself…
Indeed, I did NOT set out to find this, and had hoped
to NOT find anything of the kind (and there IS still
the VERY remote possibility that my “educated guess”
is WAAYYY off base, and that this was some type of
pre-buy… but I sincerely doubt it).

Well, I need some sleep. It’s been a long night.

—–Peace & Freedom, John—–
National Coordinator, Paul for President Coalition
Organizer, NYC Ron Paul Meetup
Paul “Save Our Generation” Grassroots Commercial:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oOc7O9_Ux_8

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