Readers who want to read the e ntire book, at least as a PDF, can get it on 3MPub.com.
There is one question mark over this image of a campaign with strong spending controls. We have the contrary testimony of Dean Ahmad. In his June 2001 memo, he wrote:
“There is one other important element in the timeline relating the attached (Summer 1995) e-mail. Before this e-mail was written I had asked Jack Dean whether or not it was true that the Browne Campaign and/or the LP was in debt to the tune of approximately $100,000. Mr. Dean’s response was ‘I’ll have to get back to you on that.’ He never did get back to me, but eventually we learned the truth. For the benefit of current LNC members who were not around at that time: there was indeed a debt of that size.”
If the Browne campaign was severely in debt at the end of the pre-nomination campaign, Browne had covertly demonstrated yet another way to capture a nomination, namely spending without thought for the future. For a nominee, campaign debt is readily discharged. For a failed nominee, campaign debt is almost impossible to discharge. The nominee who is most willing to go heavily into debt, debt that he cannot repay unless he wins, has a significant advantage over his competitors.
We’ll now look at how the Browne campaign spent its money in 1994-1995. Some items keep repeating. Most of the same staff members keep getting paid. The campaign invested primarily in convention travel and in mailing fundraising letters through a standard set of vendors. But there are also a few gems.
1994
The campaign organized in the Summer of 1994. Early announcements referred to two campaign co-Chairs, David Bergland and Douglas Casey. Bergland was the 1984 Presidential candidate, and author of “Libertarianism in One Lesson”, an introduction to the Party philosophy that has sold more than 100,000 copies. Casey is an investment advisor. The Campaign also appointed an executive officer, Sharon Ayres, who was David Bergland’s wife. By and by Ayres replaced Michael Cloud as the person seemingly running the campaign. There was also a Campaign Committee, a list of donors with no formal control of the Campaign’s business. Over two years the Campaign Committee grew to include members such as former Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates Ed Clark, John Hospers, Nancy Lord, and Tonie Nathan, as well as notables including Party founder David Nolan and former Party Chairs Mary Gingell and Alicia Clark.
The campaign’s July-September 1994 records show $15,395 in fundraising, $13,000 of which was in the form of $1,000 donations. Expenses for the period include $877 to Kiana Delamare as reimbursement for supplies, and $501 to Harry Browne for travel.or October-December 1994, the campaign went in debt to Harry Browne to the extent of $6305. It also spent roughly $43,000, including payments to people:
| Kiana Delamare | $24,361 |
| Michael Cloud | $3,167 |
| Stuart Reges | $1,626 |
| Lisa Paley | $1,100 |
| Harry Browne
and to vendors: |
$728 |
| Frank Gumpert (printing) | $3,340 |
| Richard Mayberry (legal services) | $992 |
The payment to Browne was for travel reimbursement. Other payments are described as consulting and reimbursement for items including travel, office supplies, phone, and postage. The payments to Delamare were for consulting services, supplies, and travel. This will be the last appearance of Delamare in the Browne filings.
First Quarter, 1995
For the first quarter of 1995 the Browne campaign raised $37,223, including 15 donations of the legal maximum of $1,000, and spent $30,366. Payments to people for consulting and expense reimbursements (under Federal law, the candidate may receive reimbursements, but may not be paid a salary) included
| Harry Browne | $8,989 |
| Michael Cloud | $3,900 |
| Lisa Paley | $3,571 |
| Stuart Reges | $2,022 |
| Sharon Ayres | $750 |
| Perry Willis | $578 |
| William Winter | $388 |
while payments to vendors (and the purpose of disbursements) included:
| Mount Vernon Printing (printing) | $3,300 |
| Accumail (postage and mailing) | $2,922 |
| Richard Mayberry (legal services) | $1,071 |
| DS Mail for Less (mailing) | $600 |
The above was the first reported payment to Willis.
Second Quarter, 1995
In the second quarter of 1995, Browne campaign fundraising accelerated markedly. The campaign raised $148,000, a fourfold increase over the previous quarter, and disbursed $120,000, also a fourfold increase. Major expenses included travel and mailing.
The LNC received $4765 for list rental. “List rental” refers to a critical part of direct mail fundraising. To raise money by direct mail, you generally need a vendor who prints your appeal. You also need a vendor who addresses the envelopes, applies stamps or mailing indicia, and drops your fundraiser into the mail. Finally, you need a mailing list, a set of names and addresses where the mail will be sent. The challenging part of direct mail is obtaining good mailing lists. A common approach is to rent lists from other sympathetic groups. From the FEC reports and statements in the last Chapter, the Browne campaign regularly rented the primary mailing list of the Libertarian National Committee. List rental is not cheap; it may approach 20% of the cost of a typical Libertarian political mailing.
Different vendors may be paid on different dates, so the printing, postage, and list expenses from a single mailing may be paid over several months. Here the Browne campaign spent nearly $7,000 for printing, nearly $10,000 for stuffing and mailing the envelopes, and slightly under $5,000 for mailing lists and other matters. List rental was nearly a fifth of the total mailing cost. (Observe that Presidential nominating campaigns are sources of income for the National Party. Candidates for the Party’s Presidential nomination must pay to use the National Party’s mailing lists.)
Large disbursements for printing and mailing appear to correspond to Browne’s May, 1995 fundraising letter, in which Browne proposed to make ‘a 7 to 10 percent showing in the (1996) New Hampshire primary’. The objective was to establish Browne as ‘the Third Candidate for President’ ‘by constantly advertising and publicizing me as the Third Candidate for President’. To reach this goal, Browne hypothesized spending $270,000. The $2000 to Perry Willis appears to correspond to an invoice from Willis to Sharon Ayres (National Director, Harry Browne for President)— not to be confused with the 1996 Invoice from Willis to Dean and Associates—as recently released by John Famularo. The payment, which was revealed in Browne’s second quarter 1995 FEC Filings, is specified as covering ‘First Draft of Campaign Plan’.
Associates of the campaign were paid and reimbursed for expenses including
| Sharon Ayres | $26,331 |
| Michael Cloud | $13,818 |
| Harry Browne | $6,848 |
| Stuart Reges | $6,680 |
| Dean, Spear, Assoc. | $4,000 |
| Lisa Paley | $3,936 |
| Perry Willis | $2,000 |
| William Winter | $885 |
In addition to the people listed above, another half-dozen staff and half-dozen others were to receive modest amounts, to be aggregated in the final summation. Vendors received
Carlson Wagonlit Travel $12,007
Accumail (postage and Mailing $9,871
services)
LNC (shipping, literature, list rental) $4,765
Mount Vernon Printing $6,920
BB Duplicators $4,522
Time Printing $3,551
DS Mail for less $2,406
Postage $900
We continue next time.
