Disclaimer: The comments in this blog are my personal opinion and may or may not reflect an adopted position of the city of Glendale and its city council.

All candidate committees as well as Political Action Committees such as the fire union PAC, First Responders for a Safe Glendale, were required to turn in their finance reports on July 15, 2020. This report covers the period from April 1, 2020 to June 30, 2020. Many campaigns will deliberately arrange payments for mailers, etc. to occur after June 30th because the next finance report is due after the Aug. 4th election. In that way you, the public, may not see campaign donors and activities that could appear controversial to the voter. Here is the link to the city website where all campaign committee and PAC finance reports can be accessed: https://docs.glendaleaz.com/WebLink/CustomSearch.aspx?SearchName=Elections&cr=1 . In the ‘Content’ bar choose from the drop down menu ‘Campaign finance reports’ and in the ‘Committee type’ select from a drop down menu the name of the campaign committee report you wish to view.

My campaign report shows contributions to date of $35,524.05 and expenses of $15,942.56. The most notable of my expenses is $4,131 in attorney’s fees to challenge Alexander’s petitions in court and $10,000 to a political consulting firm for the design and printing of campaign signs, all mailers and additional campaign related political activities.

Let’s take a closer look at Alexander’s financial campaign filing. In this election cycle to date he has raised $6,740.00. Of that amount $4,700 is Alexander’s own money. He received a total of 5 campaign contributions from individuals: Payam Raouf for $500; Bruce Heatwole for $150; Glendale Councilmember Bart Turner for $250; Richard Vangellisti for $600; and Jessica Koury of $200. Total contributions from these 5 individuals are $1,700.

To date he has spent $1,094.53 of his total $6,740.00. His expenses are not unusual for a campaign – bank fees, website creation and internet costs, and Facebook ads. In this report he finally acknowledges that he paid for petition signature gatherers in the amount of $500 to Field Corps LLC. His next campaign financial report will reflect where he spent the rest of the money and any other campaign contributions he received.

His declared expenses, or lack thereof, raise a curious question. In April I challenged his petition signatures in court. I paid $4,131 in attorney’s fees out of my campaign resources. I had one attorney that I shared with Mayor Weiers as our claims were identical. Alexander had 3 high priced attorneys from a pricey legal firm that he shared with mayoral candidate Robertson. Is he waiting to declare payment of his share for those attorneys in the next campaign filing by having the billing dated after June 30th? Or did he accept a monetary gift from someone to cover the cost? It’s still an expense that arises out of his campaign effort and will have to be declared somewhere, sometime.

You can’t look at Alexander’s finance report without also looking at the First Responders for a Safe Glendale PAC filing as well. They declared the receipt of $19,500 from the Phoenix Firefighters Local 493 Fire PAC. You can be sure there will be more dollars from Phoenix Fire PAC in the next financial report. They paid 100% of $3,335.64 for Alexander’s design and printing of signs. They also paid for Alexander’s design and printing of his door hangers and their distribution. Even though the door hangers are out on the street they are not reflected in this report because the billing may have occurred after June 30th. It’s neat how that works, isn’t it?

Again, this is information that helps to educate voters while making their decision. Sometimes candidate committee financial reports are as notable for what they do not disclose as opposed to what they do disclose.

© Joyce Clark, 2020         

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