Adventures in Online Campaign Finance: Lindsay Late, No Supplemental Filing Button

David Montgomery says Secretary of State Jason Gant's new campaign finance system still gives him fits. Yes, it's an improvement over the old paper system, but it's still a pain in the neck for users, especially for the candidates who count on this system to file their legally required data.

Roy Lindsay likely feels that way this fine election morning. The Democratic District 8 House candidate did not have a campaign finance report on file by the October 26 deadline. Secretary Jason Gant himself said that he had received no pre-general campaign finance report from the Lindsay campaign as of yesterday morning. Team Lindsay swore to me last week that they had filed it.

It's there now, dated yesterday, November 5. Lindsay has $8,687.81 on hand, mostly his own money, after spending a meager $1,792.19 so far. At least $250 of that will go to Secretary Gant as the penalty for not filing on time.

But it's hard to tell if the screw-up was really Lindsay's or the system's. Consider this cotemporaneous tale of Gant-tastic computer adventures:

I hear another person who runs a PAC (runs it? I think he is a PAC... but that's a whole nother blog post) was trying to file a supplemental report yesterday. PACs and other committees have 48 hours to file those reports from the time of the receipt of big chunks of cash; if they fail to meet that deadline, they face a Class 1 misdemeanor penalty, which can be a year in jail and a $2000 fine.

So PAC-man's clearly motivated to file that paper pronto. He logs into his account on the Secretary of State's website. He's looking for the button to file "Supplemental." Button, button, button... no button. I haven't filed reports on the new system, so I don't know if there's a supplemental report button or not. But PAC-man says there was one and that it disappeared from his account. He's got a time-sensitive document and the button that would have allowed him to file it has gone poof? That's a hair-raiser!

PAC-man called and got help: the Secretary of State's office advised simply printing a form and faxing it in, as apparently have other committees with last-minute contributions to report. There's just one more flaw in Secretary Gant's online jalopy: during the busiest time of the campaign, the system does not allow online filing of the most time-sensitive document required by the campaign finance system.

District 32: PACs Go Big for GOP Incumbents; Indivs Favor Dem Swanson

Here's a quick breakdown of the District 32 House money race between Republican incumbent gunbernatorial patronage beneficiaries Brian Gosch and Kristin Conzet and their sole Democratic challenger and teacher Jackie Swanson:

donations	Gosch	Conzet	Swanson
small indiv	$8,015.00	$425.00	$7,900.16
big indiv	$1,500.00	$650.00	$3,050.00
Parties	$200.00	$460.00	$116.34
SD PACs	$16,050.00	$10,850.00	$2,450.00
out-state PACs	$5,550.00	$1,650.00	$0.00
candidate cmtes	$0.00	$250.00	$0.00
in-kind	$10.75	$0.00	$700.00
total	$31,325.75	$14,285.00	$14,216.50

Now let's break that down by percentage:

donations	Gosch	Conzet	Swanson
small indiv	25.6%	3.0%	55.6%
big indiv	4.8%	4.6%	21.5%
Parties	0.6%	3.2%	0.8%
SD PACs	51.2%	76.0%	17.2%
out-state PACs	17.7%	11.6%	0.0%
candidate cmtes	0.0%	1.8%	0.0%
in-kind	0.0%	0.0%	4.9%
total	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%

Every two out of three coins in Gosch's fountain splashed in from political action committees. Conzet got five sixths of her kitty from PACs. Swanson has gotten more than three-fourths of her campaign cash from individual donors, over half from folks giving a hundred bucks or less.

The Republican incumbents appear to be the PAC picks. Swanson appears to be the people's pick.

Contra DWC, Outsider Groups Gave Noem Huge $$ Advantage

During this year's Congressional campaign, Dakota War College made the patently absurd spin-claim that Kristi Noem would not get a whole lot of support from out-of-state groups, that her campaign would win mostly on local, grassroots, South Dakota efforts.

DWC has since deleted that claim. That Sioux Falls paper ha since deleted the validity of that claim:

Republican and conservative groups spent about $2 million to help Noem win, most of it in the form of ads criticizing Herseth Sandlin. Democratic and liberal groups spent close to $600,000, most of it in ads against Noem, according to Federal Election Commission reports analyzed by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington watchdog think tank.

Herseth Sandlin said the influx of outside money definitely contributed to her defeat.

"We were outspent pretty heavily," she said [Ledyard King, "Outside Groups Backed Noem 3–1," that Sioux Falls paper, 2010.12.05].

Those outside groups do love ladies on horsies. And contrary to the spin offered by the Noem campaign and its fawning conservative blogs, those outside groups were instrumental in helping the less-qualified Noem eke out a slim plurality of the vote.

Marking: Noem Was Worst Choice

B. Thomas Marking thinks 94% of South Dakotans made the wrong choice for Congress last week. The 6% finisher thinks the 48% who voted for Kristi Noem made a really wrong choice:

B. Thomas Marking was disappointed not only with his showing in South Dakota’s three-way U.S. House race, but also with the order of the top-two finishers.

“I think that was probably the third-best choice,” Marking said this week of the winner, Kristi Noem [Tom Lawrence, "Marking: Noem Was 'Third Best' Candidate," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2010.11.11].

Alas for us bloggers, the ideologically enigmatic Marking does not elaborate on why he ranks Noem last. (Apparently Kristi's giving B-Thom top billing over Stephanie in her victory speech Election Night didn't impress him.)

Alas as well for true Indies, B.-Thom doesn't plan to build on his 6% momentum and make a run for other office any time soon. He says his experience and focus is national, so local or state office is out. And he found running a $10,000 campaign against million-dollar war chests futile, so he won't throw in for national office until campaign finance reform brings public funding.