Source: TheGuardian
Here were plenty of oddities in the financial reports filed by presidential campaigns on Thursday with the Federal Election Commission. Odd donors, peculiar expenditures and all manner of interesting nuggets. These are six of the most curious.
Donald Trump’s expensive hats
Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again hats have been a ubiquitous feature of his rallies and become a fashion trend. However, for the Trump campaign, fashion doesn’t come cheap. The Republican frontrunner has spent nearly $678,000 with two companies, Louisiana-based Ace Specialties and California’s Cali-Fame on hats and t-shirts.
Scott Walker spends the money
During his brief presidential bid, Scott Walker spent a ton of money. Several staffers made over $200,000 a year (or would have if Walker’s campaign had lasted that long) and the Wisconsin governor put his two sons on payroll at $1,500 a month. The result is that his short lived campaign is expected to be over a million dollars in debt.
Lincoln Chafee can’t buy a car
After a disastrous performance in the Democratic debate on Tuesday, former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee announced he had raised just $11,336.00 and gave additional $4,121.86 to his campaign this quarter. With this total, the self-proclaimed “block of granite” would be laughed out of many state legislative races and did not raise enough to buy a new car. (The cheapest new car in the United States appears to be the Nissan Versa, which has a starting retail price of $11,990).
Allen West backs Fiorina
Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has support from an unexpected corner. Allen West, the fiery former congressman from Florida gave $5,400 to Fiorina’s campaign. West made a series of controversial statements while in office, including alleging a number of his Democratic colleagues were Communist and claiming that Islam was not a religion but a political ideology.
George Pataki and guestbooker.com
It’s easy for presidential candidates like Donald Trump to get on television. But for former New York governor George Pataki, it appears to be far more difficult. Pataki’s campaign reported spending $10,000 to employ the services ofwww.guestbooker.com, a company that helps television and radio shows book guests.
Ted Cruz’s psychographic profiling
The Cruz campaign spent nearly $700,000 employing the services of Cambridge Analytica, a data modeling firm that employs “psychographic profiling”, in the past three months. The company does all of the Cruz campaign’s “data target” which includes both efforts to find persuadable voters as well as for what the campaign called “donor modeling” in an attempt to help it raise more money in the future.