Tillis campaign bolstered by his own $250k

By Travis Fain - News & Record Posted: Tuesday, October 22

Speaker of the House Thom Tillis? Not as popular with campaign donors as the $1 million he said he'd raise might lead you to believe.

The Associated Press moved this a little while ago:

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Almost a fourth of the money North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis says he's raised for his U.S. Senate campaign came from his own pocket.

Tillis’ latest campaign report shows the Republican lending $250,000 to his Senate bid on the report period's last day.

He announced last week raising more than $1 million since entering the race in May. The actual report lists $550,000 in contributions for the three months ending Sept. 30 and $830,000 to date. The debt brings the amount over $1 million.

Tillis’ campaign has raised the most money and has the most cash among announced candidates for the Republican nomination. Campaign spokesman Jordan Shaw says the loan shows Tillis’ level of commitment to the race.

The May primary winner will take on Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan.

By the way, you might wonder why we're talking about campaign fundraising announcements here instead of just quoting actual campaign finance documents, which are typically readily available online shortly after they're filed. The answer is, because the United States Senate prefers to pretend it's not 2013. From the Center for Responsive Politics:

They fill out their campaign finance disclosure forms on a computer, print them out, and have them delivered to the Secretary of the Senate, who in turn sends them to the FEC. Then the FEC actually pays to have those paper documents keyed by hand again.

It's hard to imagine a more wasteful and time-consuming way to get the task accomplished. Furthermore, it has been estimated that this process squanders nearly half-a-millon dollars each year, according to the president's 2013 budget proposal. In an era of furloughs and cutbacks, how can this unnecessary expense be justified?

The FEC began accepting electronically filed reports in the mid-1990's, and by 2001 House candidates were all filing their reports online. Yet senators exempted themselves from this requirement and continue to this day to cling to their antiquated system, failing to meet the public's basic expectation of transparency and needlessly delaying voters' access to vital information about candidates' fundraising.

?Contact Travis Fain at (336) 373-4476, and follow @travisfain on Twitter.