With that caveat, what can we say about the 1996 Browne Campaign? The link to the prior Chapters is the Willis Invoice. At some point in 1995 or early 1996, Willis entered into the ‘February Contract’, nominally with Dean, Spear & Associates. The Dean in question is Jack Dean, a regular supplier of Internet services to some Libertarian campaigns and apparently an insider on campaign strategy discussions. If there was only one contract, why call it ‘February’? Was the label redundant? Or were there other contracts?
Browne’s 1996 fundraising letters included February 1996 ‘Our plan to produce a professional and powerful National TV ad and recruit hundreds of CEOs’, March 1996 ‘Our plan to get into the 1996 TV debates’, June 1996 ‘Our plans to get double digits in national election polls’, August 1996 ‘Our new plan to get into the TV debates’, and finally in October 1996 ‘Our plan to saturate CNN with TV ads and to produce a professional 30 minute video for TV ad placement’. Readers may recall a letter saying that Ladbroke’s—an English odds-maker—had pegged Browne’s odds of election as being the same as Ross Perot’s, or a letter saying that the radio audience could be increased from 300,000 to 1,000,000 a week. It is difficult to determine which fundraising letters are the ones itemized by Willis in his Invoice. The Invoice refers to December, January, and February letters, Willis being paid $500 for each one, but does not identify them as to content.
Were the plans effective? Consider the ‘powerful and professional National Ad’ whose purpose it was to recruit ‘hundreds of CEOs’ to support Browne. The rationale for believing that a television ad would sway corporate executives was not clear. Nor was it apparent why CEOs were an especially attractive target. Large numbers of companies and their stockholders benefit from corporate welfare. Why would their CEOs want to cut off their government benefits? There is no indication that this ad was effectively deployed.
From the letters’ titles, Browne had many plans. Almost none worked. Money was raised, but results were never attained.
We now come to the actual campaign spending for January-June 1996. After I completed this section of the book, additional documents concerning Browne’s spending came to light. The additional documents more than confirmed what my forensic accounting is about to show. I have deliberately left my original text in place, so that you will first see my circumstantial analysis, and then see the proof that my analysis was correct. Why this repetitious presentation? I am going to apply the same forensic accounting method to reveal a very similar set of discrepancies in the 1999 spending patterns, discrepancies that remain unexplained, so I want to convince you that the method works.
January 1996
At the start of 1996, the Browne Campaign shifted to monthly disclosure filing. For January, disbursements to staff members included:
| Michael Cloud | $3,648 |
| Terry Bronson | $2,887 |
| Lisa Paley | $1,820 |
| Stuart Reges | $1,146 |
| Harry Browne | $380 |
| William Winter | $325 |
while payments in January to vendors included:
Time Printing $5,492
| D&S Mail for Less | $4,772 |
| Libertarian National Committee | $3,567 |
| Dean, Spear, and Associates | $1,500 |
| Accumai | $1,162 |
| Postage | $1,156 |
| Liberty Publishing | $951 |
| B&B Duplicators | $950 |
Note the list rentals: $3567 to the Libertarian National Committee and $951 to Liberty Publishing. Note also the large payments to printers and mailers, including Time Printing, D&S Mail for Less, Accumail, and B&B Duplicators. Mailing list rental was still around 20% of the other mailing costs.
February 1996
We now reach February, 1996, the month in which Perry Willis secretly billed Dean, Spear & Associates $2000 for some of his work for the Browne campaign. Willis admits that he was paid. Where did the money come from? Dr. James W. Lark, III, 2000-2002 Chair of the National Libertarian Party, in a report to the Libertarian National Committee dated 13 August 2001, traced the invoices farther. Lark reported that the Libertarian National Committee has possession of the financial records of the Browne 1996 campaign, including an invoice dated March 15, 1996 from Dean, Spear & Associates to the Browne campaign. The new invoice is for December, January, February, and First Prospecting Letters, in the amount of $2300, with an additional $425 for graphics. These appear to be the letters noted in the Willis Invoice. The additional $300 appears to equal the cost of a 15% commission for Dean, Spear. The identity of the person who did Browne’s graphics, which to some observers was carefully imitative of the style used by the LNC’s own fundraising letters, is not revealed by the invoice. According to Lark, the Dean, Spear & Associates Invoice was only paid by the Browne campaign on July 3, 1996.
Disbursements to staff members, consultants, and the candidate included:
Stuart Reges $7,615
Robert Martin III $7,442
Terry Bronson $4,250
Alexis Thompson $3,557
Lisa Paley $1,830
Sharon Ayres $1,324
Harry Browne $990
| There were also payments to vendors, namely | |
| Jack Williams (books) | $6,844 |
| Carlson Wagonlit Travel | $6,720 |
| Accumail | $6,215 |
| WK Advertising (video services) | $2,021 |
| Dean, Spear & Associates | $1,500 |
| Champion Printing | $1,082 |
| Liberty Publishing(list rental) | $958 |
| Postage | $247 |
There was a large postage bill, but no matching printing bill reported during this month. However, expenses can drift over from one month to the next. The list rental from Liberty Magazine would appear small to correspond to the money that was spent on mailing. There was even spending that could have involved outreach, namely Alexander Buttons & Badges $585.
Alexis Thompson is reported by an Arizona correspondent to have remained active with Libertarian political activities as a contractor and petition organizer. What did Terry Bronson do for the campaign? In his report to the LNC, Lark reveals some of the details of invoices from Bronson to the Browne campaign. According to Lark, her invoices for the February-March period include over 300 hours of “proofing fund-raising letters” at $15 an hour. Lark also reports an interesting event, namely that Bronson Office Services billed the Browne Campaign for three telephone calls made from its fax number at 8:26, 8:29, and 8:31 AM on February 27, 1996. This date is day before the date of the Willis Invoice. Lark identifies the telephone numbers being called as Perry Willis’s home voice/fax number in Virginia, the Dean Spear & Associates fax number in Fullerton, and Michael Cloud’s fax number in Los Vegas. Lark notes the telephone communications while asking if Michael Cloud knew of Willis’s covert involvement in the campaign, a question that remains unresolved.
March 1996
| March disbursements to staff members included: | |
| Harry Browne | $3,849 |
| Terry Bronson | $2,189 |
| Lisa Paley | $1,830 |
| Alexis Thompson | $1,616 |
| Sharon Ayres | $1,500 |
| Robert S. Martin III | $1,060 |
| Diane Williams | $860 |
| Michael Cloud | $393 |
| Stuart Reges | $110 |
| while payments to printers and mailers included: | |
| Carlson Wagonlit Travel | $8,106 |
| Mount Vernon Printing | $7,134 |
| Accumail | $5,385 |
| Postage | $1,000 |
| D&S Mail | $780 |
| Time Printing | $399 |
and spending perhaps on outreach included:
Newmark Sign Shop $1,528
Total printing came to $8300, while postage exceeded $6400. This month there is no expense at all for list rental. Where was the mailing sent? There was a list rental last month, but there was also a large matching postage bill. Were all mailings sent to donors? Willis’s 8/1/95 memo to Browne’s campaign leadership, as released by Famularo, refers to “…our 2,000 donors.” Had Browne’s donor list grown enough to require almost $15,000 in mailing expenses to reach? That would appear to require tens of thousands of names, the equivalent of multiple mailings to the entire National Party membership, but there is no indication that Browne had so many donors.
