{"id":8595,"date":"2017-09-27T07:00:18","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8595"},"modified":"2017-09-26T17:36:31","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T21:36:31","slug":"candidates-hug-your-treasurer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8595","title":{"rendered":"Candidates, Hug Your Treasurer"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Political campaigns have all kinds of characters in them.\u00a0 There are the campaign managers, the best of whom are data nerds, bartenders, therapists and trouble shooters all at once.\u00a0 Then there are the hard core supporters, always ready to insist that their candidate is the reincarnation of Mandela and eager to pounce on dissenters online.\u00a0 There are the cross-eyed pundits, tossing out great gobs of bloggy drivel onto an unsuspecting populace.\u00a0 And of course there are the candidates, their toothy daytime smiles concealing roiling anxiety in the dead of night.<\/p>\n

But no one pays attention to the true MVPs of political races: the Treasurers.\u00a0 Money is the lifeblood of all campaigns and these are the people who control it.\u00a0 Without a competent Treasurer, a campaign can\u2019t collect its money, pay its bills, file its reports or do much of anything at all.\u00a0 And the workload is often far greater than anyone, even the candidates themselves, can ever understand.<\/p>\n

I was a Treasurer once.\u00a0 Senator Rich Madaleno asked me to assume that role for the District 18 slate back in 2008.\u00a0 It was not the first nor the last dumb thing I have done for a politician I like!\u00a0 The account records (actually, the disorganized piles of random papers) were delivered to me in shoe boxes.\u00a0 Shortly afterwards, I began receiving notices from the State Board of Elections that the previous report filings were deficient and needed to be corrected.\u00a0 But the state didn\u2019t say what the flaws were.\u00a0 Phone calls to the state offices were laughably useless.\u00a0 So I had to reconstruct every single transaction in the history of the account(!!!!!) and re-file every single report that had ever been sent in.\u00a0 This required weeks of agony, but dammit, no account with my name on it was going to get fined.\u00a0 Even bloggers have standards!<\/p>\n

Dear future candidates: don\u2019t ever ask me to be a Treasurer again.\u00a0 I would rather gargle cockroaches.<\/p>\n

This year, the normally substantial challenges of being a Treasurer are compounded for a uniquely unfortunate subset of them: the Treasurers responsible for MoCo\u2019s public campaign financing accounts.\u00a0 The reason is that the state requires evidence of a contributor\u2019s in-county residency before approving public matching funds for that contribution.\u00a0 That\u2019s easy to do with online contributions: all a campaign has to do is add a couple fields illustrating residency and collecting a digital signature.\u00a0 But what happens if a dinosaur (like, say, your author) pays with a written check?\u00a0 Well folks, that\u2019s when the fun begins!<\/p>\n

All contributions eligible for matching funds must be accompanied by proof of residency that is provided to the state.\u00a0 For physical checks or cash, that means the donor must complete and sign a written form indicating residency in Montgomery County.\u00a0 Somebody (that might be you, Mr. or Ms. Treasurer!) has to make sure that form is filled out and collected.\u00a0 If a check or cash shows up in the mail, that means tracking down contact information for the contributor and getting hold of them.\u00a0 \u201cThank you for contributing to Politician X, ma\u2019am.\u00a0 Could you fill out and sign this form showing that you live in MoCo and send it back to us?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWell, I\u2019m out of stamps and my scanner is busted.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m out of the country for two weeks.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll think about it and get back to you.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI just donated to you.\u00a0 Why are you bugging me?\u00a0 I want my money back!\u201d\u00a0 And these are the G-rated responses.<\/p>\n

Campaigns love this like they love tarantulas in the shower.\u00a0 One campaign surrogate says his campaign \u201cabsolutely hates it\u201d when they get paper checks because of the time required to chase down donors.\u00a0 One candidate with prior electoral experience estimates that the time taken to deal with these administrative issues is 40% greater than it is under the old traditional system.\u00a0 Another candidate simply says, \u201cOy.\u00a0 Vey.\u201d\u00a0 And again, these are the G-rated responses.<\/p>\n

Nothing can be done to remedy these issues in the short term.\u00a0 And let\u2019s remember: the state is within its rights to demand proof of residency to prevent mistaken distributions of public matching funds.\u00a0 But candidates in public financing must absolutely do one thing.<\/p>\n

Hug your Treasurer.\u00a0 Do it today!\u00a0 Tell them you love them.\u00a0 Or it might be YOU who has to chase down those donors!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Political campaigns have all kinds of characters in them.\u00a0 There are the campaign managers, the best of whom are data nerds, bartenders, therapists and trouble shooters all at once.\u00a0 Then there are the hard core supporters, always ready to insist that their candidate is the reincarnation of Mandela and eager to pounce … Continue reading Candidates, Hug Your Treasurer<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,138],"tags":[1545,1541,1908],"class_list":["post-8595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-campaign-finance","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-campaign-finance","tag-public-campaign-financing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2eD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8596,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8595\/revisions\/8596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}