GAGOP Finances Run Low
Greg Bluestein and James Salzer at the AJC released a story yesterday that shone the light on some financial issues with the Georgia Republican Party. From their story:
“The Georgia GOP filed an end-of-the-year report showing it had $11,403 cash on hand and was $231,000 in debt, in a startling revelation for a party that commanded millions just a few election cycles ago.
[T]he party’s bank account has steadily depleted over the last six years. It had $2 million in the bank at the start of 2010, $844,000 in early 2012 and $425,000 in 2014.”
From the Federal and State reports, which you can see by following the links below, the Federal balance on hand was $19,005.10 with a debt of $125,050.46 and the State balance on hand was $11,403.28 with a debt of $231,162.96.
FEDERAL REPORT OF RECEIPTS AND DISBURSEMENTS
From Party spokesman Ryan Mahoney:
“Under the leadership of Party Chairman John Padgett and Foundation Chairman Jack Kingston, the GAGOP continues to raise money and strengthen relationships with key donors throughout the state and country. Thanks to their hard work and the continued support of so many Georgia Republicans, we will have the resources in place to implement the Party’s 2016 Victory program, protect our U.S. Senate seat, and win back the White House in November.”
Please feel free to speculate, pontificate, and prognosticate in the comment section.
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lawtonsack
Lawton is a graduate of Georgia Southern University (the GSU) with a degree in Information Technology. He has held numerous positions within the Georgia Republican Party throughout the years.
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I’m not sure the “trend” is what the original story (AJC) implies. Fundraising depends upon a variety of factors, some of which we can not control. For instance, we had a rather good opportunity to raise funds in 2008 as a result of the Obama election and the U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia.
A chunk of that 2008 “windfall” went into technology upgrades (the GAGOP was running phones, servers and desktops purchased in the late 1990’s in 2008).
Chairman Everhart was in the banking business and tended to be conservative when it came to expenditures, so held some balance to ensure the party wouldn’t find itself cash-strapped at some critical point. Some argue she should have spent more of the money on campaigns and been a bit less frugal. That’s another issue though.
If you look back to 2007, Everhart came in a few months after the report showing about $260K in the bank, but the convention bills had not come in yet, so much of the $200K+ was soon to be consumed by payables. Not throwing stones here, keep looking back into the 1990s and you will see the party is usually somewhat cash-poor immediately following an election year. Most every chairman comes in with less than $200K. It’s part of the ebb and flow.
The GAGOP had an unusually high balance after 2008 for the reasons stated above. The $848K balance shown going into 2013, near the beginning of Padgett’s term, was closer to $1M by convention and virtually all of the convention costs were paid.
Operating budgets for the party tended to be in the $60K-$70K a month range throughout most of the 2003-2013 period (this includes rent, payroll, etc). That number jumped to over $100K in 2013 with little in the way of effective fundraising.
The current administration has clearly been ineffective at fundraising and one would think adjustments to expenditures would be the logical thing to do if the revenue was not there. Unfortunately, cuts did not appear to happen until after the GAGOP was acquiring indebtedness in 2015 and the cuts were clearly not deep enough.
I’ve included the annual numbers along with the chairmanship changes for reference:
Year COH
Jan 2007 258K Poitevint -> Everhart
Jan 2008 713K
Jan 2009 2.2M
Jan 2010 2.0M
Jan 2011 1.2M
Jan 2012 844K
Jan 2013 848K Everhart -> Padgett
Jan 2014 425K
Jan 2015 188K
Jan 2016 11K – 231k = -220K
rut roh….. looks like they’ve been taking finance lessons from the GA Democrats.
Just more evidence that the big money now goes to the PACs.
Under the Padgett administration Stoneridge Group was the big winner with over $1,900,000 earned working for the state GOP.