Gary Johnson
Posted by George Phillies on July 26, 2013 on Gold USA Group’s website:
At the end of December, 2011, Johnson announced that he was switching parties to pursue the Libertarian Party’s Presidential nomination. We are now into Johnson’s Libertarian nominating campaign. We remind readers that Johnson’s January, 2102 disbursements are found in his “February” FEC filings, the filings made in February. In January 2012, the Johnson campaign had $65,592 in income, spent $73,103, and ended the month with $901,219 in debt, an increase of more than $70,000 over his end-of-2012 debt of $828,738. That is, Johnson 2012 was spending money more than twice as fast as it was coming in, despite already having much of a million dollars in debt and the prospect (if victorious) of a Libertarian Presidential campaign, an operation that historically has brought under $1.5 million during the General Election period.
In January, Johnson 2012 gave $3000 to the Hackstaff Law Group, $3253.46 to Zions Bank for Bank and Merchant charges, and $66,500 to “Political Advisors”. Many of the individual amounts given to Political Advisors had odd pennies in them, but the total was quite round.
Johnson 2012 paid off some old debts, and added new ones. In identifying line numbers, we are using the same scheme as in prior articles, namely that each debt is reported in the FEC Filings with an associated line number, so it is straightforward to track when debts were created, and when they were paid.
Old debts paid off were Lines #4173 for $19046.37, #46741 for $18,481.62, and #46742 for $22001.29. Line #4172 had been created in April-June 2011, and had largely been paid off. Lines #46741 and #46742 had been created in July-September 2011. A partial payment was made toward #46743, namely $7170.72 out of the total for that line of $127,645.25. These are all lines created as part of Johnson’s Republican campaign, being paid off by the donations of Johnson’s presumptively-Libertarian supporters.
Johnson 2012 ran up new debts in January. #46898 for $5849.55 referred to campaign expenses; #46899 for $103,878 refers almost entirely to staff salaries. In detail:
#46898 includes (numbers rounded) $1815 for placing web ads, $233 for miscellaneous and office supplies, $760 for shipping, and $3041 for email marketing costs.
#46899 included: Senior political officer, 50 hours at $325.00 per hour totally $16,250; Mid-level management 612.43 hours at $125.00 per hour totalling $76553.75, and 10 hours of creative advertising at $225.00 per hour for a total of $2250. That’s about four FTE staff members. Also in here were $8824.25 of ‘outside subcontracts as per agreement’.
In addition to these, the accountants/FEC filers were owed an additional $5700, and EH2 Consulting (line #46654) was owed an additional $26,754.08 for fundraising. Observe that the fundraisers were taking 40% of every dollar raised in January. Of the ~$140,000 in new debts, under $6000 went to real politics. That’s 4% of the total going to politics, 96% going to administration, staff, and subcontractors.
Gary Johnson got 1,276,000 votes. For the first time since 1988, the Libertarian Party placed third in the presidential race. We ended up ballot-qualified in more states than ever before (for the day after an election). Johnson was the only the third two-term Governor in U.S. history to be the nominee of a party other than one of the two major parties. His decision to leave the Republican Party and join the Libertarian Party, and to be our nominee, raised the prestige of the LP in the eyes of the journalists and pundits who pay close attention to U.S. politics. This is why the Republican Party, which until 2008 had never tried to keep us off the presidential ballot in any state (and in 2008, they only did that in Pennsylvania), fought to keep Johnson off in Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Good point. Also, Nielson claims that the spending reported to the FEC was an attempt to increase their matching funds. He also claims it was legal. I don’t know whether either claim is true, but he personally told me this on more than one occasion.
Readers should note that this is part of a series of articles on the Johnson 2012 financial reports, the ones that were massively amended after election day, and so prior articles cover everything from the start up through (here) January and (in the current Liberty for America) February.
Gary Johnson got 1,276,000 votes. For the first time since 1988, the Libertarian Party placed third in the presidential race. We ended up ballot-qualified in more states than ever before (for the day after an election). Johnson was the only the third two-term Governor in U.S. history to be the nominee of a party other than one of the two major parties. His decision to leave the Republican Party and join the Libertarian Party, and to be our nominee, raised the prestige of the LP in the eyes of the journalists and pundits who pay close attention to U.S. politics. This is why the Republican Party, which until 2008 had never tried to keep us off the presidential ballot in any state (and in 2008, they only did that in Pennsylvania), fought to keep Johnson off in Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
NewFed @ 11,
It’s certainly true that Wrights had much less name recognition than Johnson.
On the other hand, it’s also true that Johnson’s name recognition is, if not strictly statistically insignificant, at least nothing to write home about.
Sorry, I was wrong. Gary left the Republicans in December. My bad. 40 is on the high side for a minor party member, but not unheard of.
@5 in January when he was paying 40 percent for fundraisers, Gary Johnson was a Republican and former governor of a swing state. He could have easily tapped into Southwest regional donors cheaply especially with his connections in the party.
The August Liberty for America is out. Readers will note that we are covering expenses of Johnson 2012 a month at a time, and by and by for the entire campaign.
Table of contents:
Editorials: Congress Declares War! War on America!, Innocence is No Protection, “Libertarian Populism” = Republican Lie.
National Party News: Libertarian Presidential Poll; Mack Out as LNC Region 3 Representative
State and Local News: Connecticut Team Runs to Free Norwich, Other Connecticut Candidates, State Executive Directors, Virginia Libertarian Candidates, Ohio Governor/Lieutenant Governor Campaign, New Jersey Campaigns, Wrights’ Texas Campaign, Diaz to Run for Governor, LP-Michigan News, Nebraska Liberty Events, New England State Conventions, Other Political Coverage
Where Your Money Went: Libertarian National Committee, Barr 2008, Johnson 2012
Political Strategy Charles Wilhoit’s Political Strategy, Payment for Ballot Access, Petitions & Petitioning the LNC
LNC In Action….It’s still only 2% of a building.
Well, if Lee Wright had been the nominee and spent the kind of money Johnson spent on advertising, I’m sure he would’ve gotten pretty close to a million votes.
And on the payday, the campaign likely spent 100% of the campaign spending “went” to staff.
Pick a short period, get distorted/misleading results, quite often.
I was not defending the Johnson campaign but Lee Wrights most likely would have polled numbers in the Badnarik range. He may well have done better at party building and certainly would not have wasted money like the Johnson campaign apparently did but he had nowhere the name recognition that a former governor had. Like I said, I am not defending the Johnson campaign .
@9 It’s difficult to predict the future, especially when it did not happen. I believe Lee would have made far more vigorous use of his financial resources to advertise, and to build the party — Johnson party-building seems to have been less than highly effective.
@8… I doubt the ticket would have polled over a million votes, either.
It’s a shame. Something tells me that id Lee Wrights had been the nominee, this kind of waste wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
While I was State Chair or State Treasurer of my State Party, we did a series of fundraising drives. I also did fundraising in 20007-2008 for my own campaign. on several occasions, I have helped the LPNH raise money for various purposes. Now, as Richard Viguerrie correctly explains, political fundraising letters have two purposes, the other being to educate the reader and frame the issues, so charging the entire mailing cost to the direct mail fundraising effort may be misleading. On the other hand, electronic fund raising is cheap. Having said all this: A 2-1 return on libertarian political direct mail is representative of our outcomes. We once got up to 3-1. We discovered one ineffective but not extremely long list and lost money on it.
I seem to remember someone saying this during the campaign.
For a third party candidate with no name recognition running in a hotly contested race?
“The fundraising ratio is a meaningful measurement for America’s biggest charities: the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, UNICEF, Goodwill Industries, CARE, the American Cancer Society. All these groups are decades old, command instant name recognition, and have large development departments with the talent and the resources to use every conceivable means to raise money and can make the most of every dollar spent on fundraising. Each of them raises more than $300 million a year.” http://www.malwarwick.com/learning-resources/articles/fundraising-ratios.html
On average for every dollar raised you should spend somewhere around 25 cents on average to raise it. He is far above average.
And how would you raise $20,000 without paying for fundraising?
That is terrible campaign management. It looks as if they outsourced everything and fundraisers taking 40 percent of funds raised is ridiculous. With over 20,000 dollars of creative advertising I could have put together an internet campaign four times the content the the Johnson campaign. There is something wrong here.
Yes, I am writing another book, a bit at a time. We have had a series of far right and Republican characters come near our Presidential and Congressional campaigns, and the money mostly went off to legal but unfortunate destinations.