Jon Ossoff’s mistakes

As you may remember, Jon Ossoff ran an unsuccessful runoff campaign for congress in Georgia’s 6th district. He got close, but no cigar, in the runoff.

http://www.newsweek.com/who-rodney-stooksbury-georgia-jon-ossoff-629827

As this is America, where money is everything, I looked at the huge amount of money he raised and his dramatic financial mistakes from the recent FEC summary, below.

He may not ever win a seat in congress if he repeats his financial errors. Here are my observations of his errors. Your thoughts may be different.

Take a look at the Federal Election Commission’s summary of his campaign finances. You’ll see that he raised an astronomical amount in his campaign, over $30 million, but foolishly donated $50,000 to his campaign committee from his own pocket. Once donated, it’s gone.

He should have loaned the money to himself, collected funds from his supporters and then paid himself back using these donated funds. That’s how it’s done in federal elections.

Typically a candidate, if he has any sense and the assets, will loan his committee a very large amount immediately to scare off competitors.

He’ll then repays his loan after the registration period has closed, or after the primary or general election depending on the competition.

The media pays attention to the numbers, and the bigger they are the more free coverage you get. The bigger the loan, the more donations the candidate gets as he is perceived as the winner in waiting.

In Jon Ossoff’s instance, even worse, he borrowed $250,000 that he loaned to his campaign committee and didn’t pay it back before the donors money ran out!

That means he owes a bank or other creditor $250,000! To sum up, the report shows that the committee still owes a total of $418,877.00, I think including the $250,000!

Apparently raising over $30 million wasn’t enough. Only in America.

Finally, he spent almost all the money… over $30 million, and only has about $13,000 in his campaign bank account, not nearly enough to use in his next election campaign plus his campaign is in substantial debt.

The game is to keep a substantial reserve, so that you can run again using the prior contributors money. Sadly, the law allows that.

As an aside, if I would have won my election, I would have introduced a bill so that all left-over funds be given to charity after the elections so that they are fairer. They aren’t fair, but you have to run for federal office to understand the “smoke and mirrors” game played on the public.

So I’m not impressed with Mr. Ossoff or his treasurer’s financial acumen. If he runs again, our nation may be in trouble if he wins and is made a member of a finance committee.

Knowing our government, he’ll be able to buy the chairmanship for the annual fee. That’s another article.

https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00630426/