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.

3 thoughts on “More On Campaign Debt”
  1. Y’know, with all the talk I’ve been hearing about his past campaign debts, I’ve been wondering…

    Yeah, we know he’s a nutcase with an ego to rival Ralph Nader’s, and the Illinois senate race provides yet another national soapbox for his loony ideas, but could it be that Keyes is in it for the money?

  2. Tully (my favorite fossil, by the way), you may be on to something. Maybe not money generated by the campaign directly into his coffers, per se, but the back end money that could come from the exposure which he hopes will boost his book sales and/or expand syndication of his radio show and anything else he might having hanging out there.

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