Getting to know Chet

How does the old saying go? You can learn a lot about someone from looking at their checkbook register. I think that’s true, you can see what organizations, churches, and charities they support, and what else they spend their money on. Well the same is true in politics; you can learn an awful lot from looking at campaign disclosure reports.

So let’s see if there is anything else we can learn about Governor Culver from his most recent report.

Total Dollars raised: $1,027,517.49
Total Number of Donors: 409
Number of Donors of a $1000 or more: 133
Of that 133 how many are PACs and Special Interest Groups: 50
The 133 $1000 plus donors made up $743,050.00 of the million dollars he raised.
$457,500.00 of the $743,050.00 came from just 16 donors.

So what does it mean? Culver is in the pocket of special interest groups and a few large donors who want something. While I always find the above interesting, there’s always something else. Like Tom Gill, they guy who targeted Danny Carroll in 2006. He’s not getting his friends to send in small checks anymore, he’s just giving IDP, Gronstal, McCarthy, Murphy and Culver big contributions. But the most telling sign in the disclosure is how he paid his bills, especially his campaign credit cards.

Simply put, Chet Culver has poor money management skills. It took him till February to pay his to VISA bills from December 2007. He repeatedly is paying finance charges on his credit cards meaning he was either late in paying them, or isn’t paying them off every month, which is stupid when you have over a million bucks in the bank. What a waste of money.

While on the surface these are all minor things, but this is the guy who wants to put $700 million on our state credit cards. He say’s we will pay it back with gambling revenues, which seems to be the answer to everything these days. I think I remember him wanting to pay teachers with gambling revenue during the 2006 campaign. Anyway, my point is Chet Culver is the LAST person we should trust with our state finances. If you need proof, just check out his online discourser, don’t bet on Chet.