Follow the Money

Probably the best advise for how to figure out what is really going on. There is even a national website called FollowTheMoney.org., run by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. They used to call me for help obtaining data on Louisiana elections. Now that all of our District and Major level candidates are required to disclose electronically, and that data can be downloaded in CSV format, it's much easier to obtain. I would strongly recommend you use them, and fec.gov to keep up with the 2016 Congressional and Presidential campaigns.

But this year, with all Statewide and Legislative offices, and others, up for grabs our own Ethics Board Website is the place to be. Annual and Supplemental reports were due last Wednesday. We have 4 candidates, so far, for Governor of Louisiana: David Vitter, John Bel Edwards, Jay Dardenne, and Scott Angelle. They all filed on time. Three of them waited until the deadline to file. Jay Dardenne filed his the Friday before. Their reports are linked above. I've downloaded their data into a spreadsheet, and in my next blog we'll start looking at it.

Allow me to introduce myself

My name is Gene Dawson. (Actually, it's Vernon Eugene Dawson, Jr., but almost nobody knows me by that.) And as of the publication of this post I am a retired Civil Servant in Louisiana.

I just retired from the Louisiana Ethics Administration Program. I worked there from 7/1/1998 until 2/15/2015. My job title was "IT Technical Support Specialist," but what I really did was technical support for the LEADERS program. That stands for "Louisiana Ethics Administration Disclosure and Electronic Reporting System." In case you're not familiar with it, that is the system used by Candidates for public office in Louisiana (candidates for Federal office not included) to disclose to the public where their campaign money comes from, and where it goes.

Many people seem to miss the last word in that acronym: System. They think of LEADERS as the software used to file reports. That is merely one component of a system. LEADERS is in fact just a name.

I only point that out because it has been a burr under my saddle for a long time.

As I said I have done technical support for that system for over 16 years. Along the way I have had little choice but to become familiar with the Campaign Finance laws in Louisiana. Not being one to let that experience go to waste, I am now available as a consultant.

It's an election year here in Louisiana. So if you're thinking about running for office, or you know someone who is, you might want to give me a call.