Browne did try to work the radio-talk-show circuit. However, the demographics of radio talk shows are not optimal for a Libertarian. Talk radio listeners are often older, politically active, but already committed to another political party. Hosts may convert to the Libertarian Party. What about their listeners? Many listeners who are not committed to another party are extreme conservatives, who are happy to hear about our party’s fiscal freedom positions, and delighted to hear about our social freedom issues until we change the topic from gun ownership to getting Congress out of our bedrooms and medicine cabinets. It is not clear why Willis believed that Browne would be vastly more successful than Tompkins, Ohmen, or Schiff at reaching and using radio hosts during the election season, the period when most people care about politics.
Some Curious Events
An examination of the 1996 nomination Campaign’s spending casts new shadows over this period. To darken the shadows, I’ll quote a few numbers from later Chapters:
Staff Reimbursements
We first look at aggregate spending. In 1995, the year before the 1996 nomination, the Browne Campaign spent over $60,000 for printing, over $90,000 for mailing, and over $35,000 for travel, a total of $185,000 of direct disbursements to vendors. As shown later in the book, in 1999, the year before the 2000 nomination, the campaign spent over $47,000 on printing, postage, and shipping, another $34,000 on postage and mailing services, and nearly $7400 on travel, a total of $88,000 in direct payments to vendors. Furthermore, in the first half of 1996 the Browne Campaign spent nearly $27,000 on printing, $33,555 on postage and mailing services, and $21,400 on travel. In the first half of 2000, the Browne Campaign spent slight more ($32,220) on printing, a bit less ($30,300) on postage and mailing services, and less ($17,800) on travel.
Printing, postage, and travel were the major outsourced expenditures of the 1996 campaign. For the years immediately preceding the 1996 and 2000 elections: In 1995, itemized disbursements in these areas were more than double what the Browne campaign spent in the same areas in 1999. Itemized disbursements to vendors in the first half of 1996 were slightly more than disbursements in the same areas in the first half of 2000.
This disparity between 1995 and 1999 spending, more being spent in 1995 than in 1999, is of interest because questions about conduits for Browne’s 1995-1996 spending arose in another venue. In 1998, Browne’s 1996 campaign co-Chair, David Bergland, was running for National Chair against the insurgent campaign of Gene Cisewski. Cisewski criticized the Browne campaign—meaning Campaign Chair Bergland—for paying its staff excessively. For example, for the first half of 1996, five staffers received disbursements at annualized rates of more than $60,000 per year. Over the two years before the nominating convention, disbursements to staff members accounted for 39% of all campaign expenses. In 1996, Bergland’s spouse Sharon Ayres received more than $100,000 as campaign manager of the Browne campaign. California is a community property state. In California, if people are legally married, half of each spouse’s income legally belongs to the other spouse.
Speaking in my presence, Bergland claimed that the campaign’s disbursements to Ayres and others were primarily not salary. He claimed that the disbursements to staffers included a modest salary, but were mostly substantial repayments to the staffers for expenses they had shouldered when the 1996 campaign was short of cash. Bergland was at the time running for Party Chair. His wife’s income from the Browne campaign was controversial. Some of Bergland’s critics had suggested that Ayres was getting rich at the Party’s expense. Bergland’s claims about that income were important to Bergland’s own campaign, because they showed Ayres was not getting rich on campaign funds. Whose claims are true? I have been unable to locate a public source detailing the alleged out-of-pocket expenses. Bergland and Ayres have not, to my knowledge, volunteered private documents, e.g., selected sections of their Income Tax Filings, W-2 forms, or the like, that would validate their claims. In 1998, neither Bergland nor his critics discussed FEC regulations that appear to restrict loans to candidates other than conventional loans made by lending institutions.
Are Bergland’s statements true? In his 2001 posting to lpus-misc, LNC activist and Browne non-enthusiast Dean Ahmad repeats reports that the 1996 Browne campaign did indeed go deeply into debt in the period immediately before the election. These debts do not appear in the FEC reports, but could have been paid off by later disbursements to staffers.
Let’s compare with 2000, the comparison that darkens the shadows. In contrast to the 1996 campaign, the 2000 campaign supposedly did not resort to borrowing money from its own staff and making later repayments. Sums paid to the Campaign Chair and others by the 2000 Campaign match closely the amounts that have been publicly identified by people associated with the Campaign as the salaries of the Chair and others. There is thus no room in the 2000 disbursements for large non-salary reimbursements to the campaign staff. The disbursements we see in 1999-2000 for printing and mailing are therefore very nearly the actual printing and mailing expenses of the 2000 Campaign.
Now we encounter the oddity. The 1996 campaign ran on a smaller total scale, with less money raised and spent, than the 2000 campaign. The 1996 campaign, unlike the 2000 campaign, masked some of its vendor expenses as payments to staffers. One might then expect that itemized spending by the 1996 campaign would be less than spending by the 2000 campaign in the same areas, e.g. printing and mailing. On the contrary, based on itemized disbursements in these areas the 1996 campaign outspent the 2000 campaign by massive proportions. Prior to the nomination, the 1996 campaign reported spending more than twice as much—almost $100,000 more—as the 2000 campaign for printing, postage, list rental, and travel.
