Reichert Refiles 2007 Q3 FEC Report: Numbers Still Confusing

Last week the Reichert campaign released a revised 2007 Q3 FEC filing.

You will recall that their original filing caused quite a brouhaha, as the campaign tried to spin the much lower than expected numbers, and awkwardly explained the discrepancies and refunds in the reports.

As a consequence, the state Democratic party filed a complaint to the FEC in November.

I've taken a look at the new report and compared it to the old, and the summary numbers are completely unchanged.

What has changed, however, are the itemized numbers attributed to various donors. The result of this is that the new amounts total $1,800 more than the previous numbers, and the new aggregate totals are $29,736 more.

But again, the summary numbers have for some reason not been updated to reflect that.

A quarter of the total of itemized numbers is made up of "memo" items that are combined into a total entered on line 12 of Schedule A. These numbers have changed but from $79,425 to $81,225 and aggregates of $147,825 to $156,725, yet these changes are not reflected by any changes in the summary data. Only the non-memo items are actually listed on line 12, and that is still the $35,754.80 received from the Bush fundraiser.

This re-filing also includes, as the original did, the following disclaimer:

"In some instances donors on this report are temporarily excessive. We are fully aware of this and are working to obtain the required documentation. As of the close of books for this filing we had not received it back. Everything will be obtained in the correct timeframe and included on our next report."

One has to assume since this refiling continues to include instances of donors with over-limit numbers, they will be correcting those problems in their Q4 report that has still yet to have been posted.

So, three months after the original filing we seem no closer to a corrected FEC filing for Q3 from the Reichert campaign that actually adds up. Meanwhile, the entity responsible for the Bush fundraiser, the Reichert Washington Victory Committee, has not filed any new or revised reports with the FEC.

So the mystery behind Reichert's 2007 Q3 numbers continues.