GARY SHUMWAY for Summit County Council

The cut off date for turning in the list of contributions and expenses for our campaign for Summit County Council was October 28th. All eleven candidates apparently met the deadline. But what a story those campaign financial reports tell! No wonder the residents of the East side of Summit County are concerned about being represented!

Note: all the financial reports can be viewed from http://www.summitcounty.org/clerk/filings.html.

Going through the financial reports a number of facts are immediately clear. On average, the Democrat candidates spent (as of 10/28) $7,320 per candidate, the Republicans $1,811, and the Constitution Party candidate (myself) $1,250. On average, by candidate, the Democrats outspent the others by approximately 4 to 1! The Democrats spent, on average, nearly $7,500 on a roughly $37,000 a year position.



You obviously can draw your own conclusions from those figures.

The next thing that struck me was the sources of the candidate's contributions. Here are the number of contributors by candidate:

60 Sally Elliott (D)
3 Bill Miles (R)
75 Claudia McMullin (D)
1 Grant Richins (R)
39 John Hanrahan (D)
1 Thomas Hurd (R)
1 Gary Shumway (C)
30 Chris Robinson (D)
1 Alison Pitt (R)
1 Steve Weinstein (D)
10 David Ure (R)

Except for Ure with 10 contributors, the Republicans and Constitution Party candidates were almost exclusively self-funding. These people were spending their own money in the campaign. On the other hand, except for Weinstein who was self-funded, all the Democrats spent little if any of their own money on their campaigns. They depended on donations from others. Interesting. I wonder if this philosophy of spending other peoples money carries through to their politics. No, couldn't be. Could it?

On the other hand, if people are going to give you their money then would you not take it to fund your campaign? Why didn't the Republicans get additional financing? Ure and Miles did to a point but they also contributed to their own campaigns. As the Constitution Party candidate I simply didn't ask anyone for funding. I funded my own campaign rather than spend the time asking for other people's money. I guess if I am going to be a politician, I need to learn to do that.

Looking at the total contributions and expenditures by candidate is also interesting.



Weinstein and Pitt both spent less than $500 on their campaigns (all self-funded), Shumway and Miles spent less than $1,500 (Shumway was self-funded while Miles had three donations), the remaining Republicans has total contributions less than $3,500 except for Hurd who self-funded his campaign to $5,000 ($2,614 of it unspent as of 10/28).

Then you get to the Democrats, who other than Weinstein, had total contributions ranging from $7,780 to $15,630, with basically none of it self-funded! Mind you again, for a some $37,000 a year job.

Of course I sound like sour grapes here for there is nothing morally wrong with people giving you campaign funding and your spending it on your campaign (as long as it is reported). It is just that the amount of money contributed to one group of politicians, compared to the others, is striking. Ask yourself why.

Now all the above is interesting and telling, but what is remarkable to me is from whence the money flows. That is, I can now understand why the East Summit County residents are so concerned about their lack of representation. Why? Because nearly all the campaign donations to the Democrats came from individuals or companies with addresses in Park City, Heber, Midway, Salt Lake City, or out of state. In fact, of the $44,370.30 in contributions given the four Democrat candidates (excluding Weinstein), only $425 of those contributions came from addresses in Eastern Summit County! (Note: I am not including, for obvious reasons, the $2,000 given by the Summit County Democrat Party with an address in Oakley) Did you get that?! Less than one percent (0.96%) of the donations to the four Democrats came from the East side! You can draw your own conclusions from those figures.

One last thing. It seems that all the Democrat candidates received $500 from the Summit County Democrat Party except for Weinstein. Makes one wonder why. Was it because Ure was seen to be unbeatable? Yet Laura Bonham, current Chair of the Summit County Democrat Party, in her third campaign bid in 2006, spent nearly $50,000 of other people’s money in a futile effort against Mel Brown. Yet even without the $500, Steve, you did OK!