Illinois Senate

More On Campaign Debt

From the inbox, more detail on the Keyes debts which I’m still trying to figure out how he reduced over $180,000 in about a month. Or why anyone accepted that answer.

“Unpaid Debts – Keyes denies responsibility.
Keyes was happy to take $100,000/year as salary from his 1992 Senate
campaign, but when it came time to pay that same campaign’s debts, he
said: “I personally do not owe the debt that was owed by the campaign.”
That was about $45,000, which was unpaid from 1992 through the end of
1996, according to the FEC. Of course, if he hadn’t paid himself so much
money, he would have had plenty to pay off that debt.

Keyes told a reporter that the money will be paid off — by the
campaign, not by him of course — but several creditors said Keyes
hadn’t communicated with them years later. In 1995-1996, for example,
his 1992 Senate campaign received $34,821 and spent over $15,000, but he
couldn’t manage to pay off any of that debt.

Finally, some time during 1997-1998, Keyes paid off most of this money.
The FEC reports show that he spent $49,544 during that time, and
reimbursed $41,094 worth of loans, but somehow he managed to end up
still owing more than $34,000 for his 1992 Senate race at the end of the
reporting period. Presumably he took on new loans to pay the old ones
(though the FEC data doesn’t give enough detail to be sure.)

Incidentally, Keyes still owes over $200,000 on his 1996 presidential
campaign as well. At the end of 1996, he owed $350,000; since then, he
has raised over $1,000,000 for a campaign that is over, but spent even
more ($1,099,972) and only reduced his debt by $150,000.

In 1995, his campaign wrote over $20,000 in bad checks, which his
spokesman blamed on a former campaign aide.”

Some of this is more understandable. The reason he rasied over $1,000,000 while spending more is he is probably doing low dollar mail fundraising. Other wingnuts do this like Bill Federer. They send out scary mail to supporters usually with Clinton thrown in every other sentence and homosexual in the other sentences. When it works it can be lucrative, but it has huge costs in sending out that much mail. He probably lost more than he pulled in. I haven’t gone through the FEC records to check, but usually fringe candidates are best positioned to use this sort of system.

Funny, Keyes Fans Don’t Even Bother With Me

Mike Murphy takes a swing at his mail box which is filling with pro-Keyes diatribes:

Median Voter Theorem, people, median voter theorem.

Complaint two is fun:

“Dear Secular Satan, you and your godless pals at the NY Times don’t get it. Alan Keyes is a beacon of moral clarity in a time when dark forces portend a holocaust upon the innocent unborn. Trash like your so-called article doesn’t belong in The Weekly Standard. It is an honor and credit to the GOP that Amb. Keyes is running with such great courage and . . .” etc, etc.

But he has never lost in November in Illinois, has he? Well, has he?

From the Washington Post

BUT LOOP FANS CAN HELP! Yes, it’s the first Loop Carpetbagger Deflection contest.

Keyes needs a sound-bite explanation for his gracious assent to move to the Land of Lincoln. Something like: “I’ve always been a Cubs fan; I decided to come clean now because I could no longer pretend to like the O’s.” Or: “Lake Michigan has no jellyfish.” Or, you can go negative: “Why, we’re practically neighbors. That joker was raised in Hawaii. You know how far Honolulu is from Chicago?” (About 6,400 miles.)

This is a two-day contest. So it’s e-mail only. Entries — to intheloop@washpost.com — must be in by 10 a.m. Friday. And you must put home, work and/or cell phone numbers on your entry. As usual, Hill and administration folks can enter on “background” or even “deep background.”

The 10 best entries will receive one of our highly coveted In the Loop T-shirts and, who knows, maybe even an invite to Keyes’s swearing-in.