Mike Shields Still Spinning An Incongruous Fundraising Yarn

Josh Feit at the Stranger has picked up on the Reichert campaign FEC snafus, and his analysis is a great example of how convoluted this mess is for people to write about.

Not because it is convoluted, so much as Mike Shields' spin regarding the reasons and the numbers are an exercise in trying to paralyze thought through confusion.

Josh writes:

Here’s what Reichert’s FEC report says on that score:
He raised $294,888 this quarter, including 218,234.11 from individuals and $88,000 from PACS.

So, if Reichert raised $185,000 from the Bush fund raiser and $88,000 from PAC’s and his total is $294,888, that means he only raised $21,000 from individuals in his own right. That’s some limp fundraising for an incumbent in a hot race.

Burner raised $273,000 from individuals, 13 times as much as Reichart’s $21,000.

Reichert’s Chief of Staff, Mike Shields, told me I was “going out of my way to look for a bad number.” He said: “You’ve somehow turned $218,000 from individual donors into [a smaller number.]” Shields reasoned that the Bush money shouldn’t be subtracted from the totals from individuals. “If you have a Bush event you’re going to put your eggs in that basket for that quarter. These are individuals who gave to Dave regardless of where they did it.”

To start with, the $294,888 number is not in the FEC report Josh links to. That's a number Shields cited in his mea-culpa press release. If Josh just added up the two totals he next cites that this number includes ($218,234.11 and $88,000) he'd come up with $306,234.11, as in the FEC report, but greater than Shields' number.

So his premise is screwy to start with not because Josh is mistaken, but because Shields continues to say one thing while the public FEC numbers still say another.

When Shields says to Josh, "You’ve somehow turned $218,000 from individual donors into [a smaller number.]" I can't help but contemplate the irony of the statement. Shields has, and continues to inflate the value of those contributions by suggesting that there is more out there from the Bush fundraiser, when anything that has not been properly recorded is actually contained within that $218,000.

For him to then go on to say that, "If you have a Bush event you’re going to put your eggs in that basket for that quarter. These are individuals who gave to Dave regardless of where they did it.", despite the fact that wasn't the case a year ago when Bush came to town for Reichert, and despite the fact the point of a Bush fundraiser isn't to suck up all the contributions a campaign might receive in a reporting period, but to supplement them! Without the event, Reichert's numbers might have been half of what Darcy Burner brought in, and barely more, if at all, than she brought in in just four days through the online fundraiser she held to counter the Bush fundraiser.

Which leads me to the day of the event when Shields was quoted as saying:

"It's a huge cash injection before the actual election cycle begins," [Reichert Campaign Manager Mike] Shields said. "An event doesn't get much bigger than this. This is a huge help."

In hindsight I think we can now truly understand just how much of an understatement that truly was!