Kerry Campaign Busted Spending Limit - On Customized Jets
Men of the People
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in 2004 — Comments (19) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Dignity. Integrity. Duty.
Aw, heck, why not just blow it all on fancy airplanes?
Sen. John Kerry broke spending limits by nearly $1.4 million during his 2004 presidential bid, including some funds spent on customizing his campaign jets, a Federal Election Commission draft audit concludes.
The FEC could rule that Kerry's campaign must reimburse the government. Because his general election campaign was taxpayer funded, Kerry would have to pay back the U.S. Treasury.
Much of the disputed money was spent on customizing jets used by Democratic presidential nominee Kerry and his running mate John Edwards, according to auditors.
Read On...
About $1.3 million was spent to reconfigure two jets before the general election. Kerry's primary campaign committee paid for most of the work.
Auditors found that the Kerry-Edwards general election campaign should have paid a larger share of the cost -- about $500,000 more. So by spending more from his primary campaign committee, Kerry broke the general election limit, auditors claim.
It cost more than $900,000 to customize Kerry's Boeing 757, including $63,103 for campaign decals on the plane's exterior.
The price tag for reconfiguring Edwards' Boeing 727 was $300,738, including $224,894 for a new telephone system and $27,659 for decals.
Kerry denies any impropriety. Interestingly, the Globe notes that "[t]he Kerry-Edwards campaign account has about $4.3 million remaining". I'm sure the campaign's donors are thrilled to hear that.
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Kerry Campaign Busted Spending Limit - On Customized Jets 19 Comments (0 topical, 19 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
install a very good satellite phone system in 'commercial' type aircraft. Backdating costs to the previous election - a top line system still should have run $75k max. They either got ripped off or are hiding costs under this line item.
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"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison
Would be my bet. Dig into it Edwards probably stuck in some of his barber costs again.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Did they reconfigure Edwards' plane to include a personal salon?
Those democrats--they're real men of the people.
They think they are entitled. Good photo. Playing football on a jet! What a life.
I've seen this photo before and it did not involve an aircraft. This is a photoshop. You cannot throw a football like that on a 727 if you are over 5 foot tall. Trust me, photo is fake.
The whole controversy is not what was done, but how it was paid for. This is normal campaing ops on either side. Remember, GWB was using Air Force 1 for his campaingn travels using only simple excuses as to why he had to be somewhere anyhow. Clinton did the same before him and so on. This is normal.
If cost sharing was not calculated appropriately (which is unfortunately often somewhat subjective), then some refunds may be due. Thats about it.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
Someone spends 300k of the taxpayers money, on a phone system for their plane and you want to argue about whether they can have a game of touch football on it ?
I am glad the rest of your post has put the incident to bed. Speaking as the unwashed masses, I wouldn't be able to get through the day without those definitive statements.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
their private planes, knowing they wouldn't have a chance to win the office? Disgusting. (But not surprising.)
Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.
Come on now. These were not their private jets. I am pretty sure neither of these guys have private jets. In this case they had some jets leased for the campaign. Standard operating procedure. Putting phone systems in them is also SOP. How this was paid for could be questionable, but this is par for the course. The question seems to be how the cost sharing was calculated.
Also why do you think they knew they had no chance to win. It was a VERY close election. This story is weak.
I do want to know why the K/E campaign has 4.3m still hanging around though...
As I recall from the election post-mortems, Kerry's campaign cut back on spending at the very end, which some thought may have influenced the outcome. Then then conceded early rather than engage in election challenges, which also preserved their election funds. At the time I recall hearing speculation that they were keeping reserve funds for 2008 in the likelihood they didn't win in 2004.
Perhaps someone else here has a clearer memory.
That may have been a fund for recounts, actually. But it still seems like a lot of donor cash to have left on the table in a close election.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
You can actually attribute that to his being very good at his day job. Mr. Kerry has a private jet, I believe, through his wife.
I don't think they knew they had no chance. They were oblivious to all sorts of things that any idiot could see from day one. That they were as doomed as Mondale, if by a closer vote, was something anyone who is neither chronically determined to see a tragedy nor a partisan Democrat could see pretty easy from the day Kerry wrapped up the nomination.
Fortunately, they were indeed that stupid.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
...after the seeing the fifth or sixth Democrat reaction to the news that Kerry had gotten the nod. Gritted teeth, a mumbled 'great' or 'wonderful' or minor swear word and a brief period spent convincing themselves that no, really, this was the guy that they wanted all along.
That being said, Kerry didn't run the worst campaign in American history. He was just too contrained by:
1). Having to run as if he was ten points ahead, instead of three points behind. Gotta love that Democratic base and their hypersensitivity to appearing weak;
2). Having to rely on Bush making a mistake;
3). Being, well, not comfortable in his own skin;
and, of course
4). Having a certain Senator and her husband not very subtly spoke his campaign at precisely the right psychological moment to derail any momentum. Although that last may have just been a happy accident.
Moe
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Looks like Peter Pettigrew.
I believe that's Shrum, no? But he sure looks like Timothy Spall there.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
Those were the days...
“Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15.”
-Ronald Reagan
I believe the Kerry Campaign took the public funds for the general election. My guess is that most of the money left over is money they raised during the primary season that they could not spend on general election activities.
I think the problem with the funds used on the plane was that they used leftover primary funds (that could not be used for the general because they took the public funds) to re-model the plane. The FEC then looked at the expenditures and said that some of that had to be paid for with general election funds.
They couldn't rent one ?
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777