Browne Campaign Finances through Summer 2001

Last updated on October 27, 2025

Slight typo in headline fixed.

For the quarter most spending went to long-time campaign associates and their firms, including:

Jim Babka                                           $8,517 (salary)

Harry Browne                                      $1,000 (travel office supplies phone)

Robert Brunner                                   $5,375 (travel office supplies salary)

Laura Carno                                        $3,452 (salary)

Robert DeVoil                                     $5,726 (printing office supplies & data entry)

Robert Flohr                                        $3,785 (salary)

Jennifer Willis                                    $2,800 (salary)

Steve Willis                                        $7,012 (phone office supplies salary)

Perry Willis                                         $4,075 (campaign management)

Stephanie Yanik                                  $4,700 (administrative services)

TOTAL: $46,442

or 49% of expenses. When payments to long-connected firms are included:

Optopia                                                $220 (phone travel insurance office

supplies)

Web Commanders                              $8,000 (Internet services)

TOTAL: $8,220

the fraction rises to almost 58%. Payments to other vendors include:

Polaris Productions                             $14,500 (video production)

Liam Works                                $10,000 (books, videotapes mail

processing)

Accumail                              $4,801 (postage and mailing

services)

The Firm MultiMedia                  $3,000 (media services and

advertising)

Cardservice Intl                                   $1,520 (credit card charges)

Call Center                                          $1,000 (phone answering)

A $41,000 payment is not evident.

April-June 2001

For the second quarter of 2001, the Browne campaign took in $17525 and disbursed $22961. The campaign reported a range of expenses, including:

Harry Browne                             $1,500 (travel office supplies

phone)

Laura Carno                                        $1,240 (salary)

 

Steve Willis                                         $1,000 (phone, office supplies)

Liam Works                                         $6,000 (media objects)

Mt Vernon Printing                              $3,954 (printing)

Polaris Productions                              $3,000 (video production)

Web Commanders                               $3,000 (Internet services)

Ameri Net                                            $1,800 (computer services)

The Firm Multimedia                          $1,000 (media services)

Even adding these amounts to the prior quarter, a $41,000 total payment to Willis’s single creditor is not evident.

Putting It All Together

So how did the Browne campaign spend its money during the 2000 Campaign?

If we look over the full life of the campaign, a certain pattern of disbursements emerges. For the four-year period through March, 2001, Perry Willis received $174,000 for his services. Stephanie Yanik, who shares his address, received $81,000 for Administrative Services. Willis’s Firm Optopia was also paid $87,000 for various purposes. Steve and Jennifer Willis received a further $86,000. The extended Willis family and their firm thus received more than $427,000 over four years, a bit less than a fifth of all campaign spending.

Jack Dean and Web Commanders received $124,000 over four years. For the four year period, other employees received substantially lower amounts, such as $76,000 to Jim Bakba, $73,000 to Robert DeVoil, and $57,000 to Stuart Reges. Many of these persons were only on the payroll for shorter periods.

Optopia is described as having supplied travel, insurance, and other services to the Browne campaign, so disbursements to Optopia were not all direct income to its owners. In the 1996 campaign, disbursements to PrimePay covered payroll service and payroll taxes. For the 2000 campaign, no conduit for transmitting payroll taxes is specified in the FEC reports. This would be entirely legal if the campaign dealt only with independent contractors rather than having paid staff, or if the taxes were passed through a financial agent.

Of the firms supplying Browne 2000, Polaris Productions got $267,000 for making the video ads, groups generally associated with direct mail fundraising got $285,000, advertising and publicity pointed mostly at nonmembers got $177,000, and $104,000 went to extra copies of TV tapes for donors and supporters. From the millions raised by the campaign, well under ten cents on the dollar went to delivering the campaign message to nonmembers. It remains peculiar that the investment in making the TV ads was far larger than the money spent in having them broadcast. Most campaigns make very different arrangements in this part of their budgets. A series of Party members with experience in making television ads and longer events have chimed in with their production costs. Without exception, their costs were lower, sometimes substantially lower, than the costs reported by the Browne campaign for similar videos. A mechanism for advising future campaigns on video production pricing issues might be beneficial to the Party.