Where lawmakers spend campaign contributions

by Patrick Gannon, The Insider, published in The Daily Reflector, August 20, 2015.

In line at the legislative cafeteria recently, a General Assembly lobbyist offered a brilliant (read “very sarcastic”) idea based on current events: Allow legislators to use campaign contributions to buy fancy suits, shoes and other accessories, but require them to promote their donors on the apparel, like sponsors on race cars and golfers’ shirts and hats.

That way, legislators could appropriately recognize contributors who help them look snazzy, and at the same time, the public would know who provided the cash that paid for the purchases as legislators vote on issues important to those donors.

Talk about transparency!

The event was the fact that Rep. Jason Saine, a Lincolnton Republican who chairs the powerful House Finance Committee, spent more than $19,000 in campaign contributions on clothing in the first six months of 2015. Yes, that’s more than $3,000 a month — all paid for by campaign donors.

State campaign finance laws don’t allow candidates to use campaign funds for personal expenses, but they do allow them to be used for expenses related to pursuing or holding public office. The State Board of Elections advises candidates to ask themselves whether they would spend the money if they weren’t a candidate or office holder. If they would spend it anyway, then those purchases shouldn’t be charged to campaigns.

In an article in The Charlotte Observer, Saine defended the purchases, most of which came from a custom tailor in Charlotte, who must love the publicity. Saine said the clothing buys were “part of the cost of doing business.” “At the end of the day it’s a campaign expense. ... I wouldn’t have these but for serving in the legislature,” he said.

Saine’s purchases, he said, included eight or nine suits, 20 shirts, two belts and two pairs of shoes. Because he works in IT and social media, his main work clothes consist of Khakis and golf shirts, not suits, he told the paper. Suits and ties are required attire for legislators.

It’s possible that Saine will reserve all those clothes for legislative or campaign business and not wear them to private weddings or any other event that doesn’t involve his work in the legislature or campaigning. Then again, he could say he campaigns at weddings.

Plenty of legislators have blurred or crossed the line between personal and campaign spending over the years, at times with little or no notice. In the recent State Board of Elections hearing into Sen. Fletcher Hartsell’s campaign finances, board members questioned the $663 on shoe repairs the Cabarrus County senator charged to his campaign.

Hartsell charged 19 shoe repairs to his campaign, but he’s a practicing lawyer, board chairman Josh Howard pointed out. “Did he claim that the Cabarrus County courthouse is barefoot?” Howard asked, according to a hearing transcript.

Kim Strach, the board’s executive director, replied that Hartsell’s explanation was that he owns two pairs of shoes that he wears and doesn’t want to replace them, so he repairs them. A couple of years ago, former Rep. Edgar Starnes, then the Republican majority leader in the House, spent about $7,000 in campaign funds in one quarter on furniture for his big new office at the General Assembly. And former Rep. Thomas Wright, a Wilmington Democrat who spent several years in jail because of campaign finance-related felonies, spent campaign cash at Victoria’s Secret.

While one could argue that all of the above mentioned expenses, except the last one, are campaign-related, the more important point has to do with the decisions made by our elected officials, who are elected to serve the public, not themselves.

Voters should take a look at who their elected representatives get their campaign money from and how they spend it. It’s all available for free on the State Board of Elections website.

It might tell you something about how they’ll spend your tax dollars. Many legislators, by the way, spend very little, if any, campaign money on anything but yard signs, advertisements, postage and the like — what you’d expect a candidate to need.

And another question: What happens to all those clothes if Saine loses a re-election bid next year?

That’s not sarcasm.

http://www.reflector.com/opinion/other-voices/gannon-lawmakers-sponsors-2960953