Regardless, they actually donated around $3.2 million to various Democratic candidates, Dem Party committees & other PACs (including themselves...$116,000 went to "Leaders We Deserve Florida"). A whopping $1.23M of it went to a single legislative candidate in Texas.
They spent nearly $1 MILLION on "consultants." "Digital consultants" "Fundraising consultants" "Compliance consultants" "Research consultants" "Strategic consultants" "Finance consultants" "Communications consultants" "Administrative consultants" "Operations consultants"
I guess that makes sense if you don't know what the hell you're doing.
They spent ~$450,000 on direct mail, though I don't know if that was to help elect candidates or marketing for themselves. They spent ~$1.7 million on "digital ads"...again, I don't know if those are ads for candidates or for themselves.
They spent $128,000 on travel (airfare, hotels, trains, gas, car rental, Lyft/Uber, etc). $166,000 to rent office space (they only list 5 employees). $184,000 in legal fees (lawyers can be expensive I know).
Speaking of those 5 employees, the payroll for them was $490,000 (this was for 18 months FWIW).
Now look at "Leaders we deserve Florida" and see how much Hogg is paying himself there as well! Guaranteed he's pulling in 300k+ from all sources which makes his unwanted dick even more embarrassing.
The nearly $2.5 MILLION they paid for "SMS Texting", "List Acquisition" and "EveryAction Software" is exaclty what you think: They bought your/my email addresses & phone numbers & spammed the shit out of them, just like many other PACs/campaigns.
I still don't understand how a payroll of $490,000 can have payroll TAXES of $318,000, but I'm neither an accountant nor a lawyer, so (shrug).
This is a list of where they pay money to, right? My guess would be that because they are remitting to both the employee and the government those are listed separately, but combined represent pretax salaries. So in total salaries are $808,000
Actually ignore that. The numbers seemed normal to me because I'm Canadian 😂 Looked up Florida's tax rates and that doesn't seem to add up.
I’m a payroll accountant and I don’t understand it either.
The other two big ticket items I don't understand: 1. $758,000 for "Allocation of Administrative Expenses" (this is almost exactly the same as the $760K gap between the "disbursements" total on the summary page and the disbursements in the detailed view, so perhaps that's the explanation?)
Charles. You are out here doing great work and providing FACTS! You are a hero like Marc Elias and your followers appreciate you beyond words.
You'd find similar spending ratios for non profits like St. Jude's and Shriners
2. $131,000 for "Credit card payment" ...except it doesn't list what the $131K was *for*...it says "see below" but there's nothing "below" in the spreadsheet version. It's possible that this shows up elsewhere in the report & I just don't know enough about how to read it.
That leaves another $110,000 or so in other/miscellaneous expenses which would've made the graph upthread impossible to read. So...there you have it: Just 28% of the $11 million they spent last cycle went to actual Democratic candidates, party committees or other PACs.
All pretty standard stuff from the looks of it for a first year PAC Certainly nothing stands out as odd or out of the ordinary
Now, here's the thing: Last year I did a similar deep dive into two other PACs and found similar results: ~25-30% went to actual candidates/etc; another ~10% or so went to what *I* feel are reasonable overhead expenses, and the remaining ~60-65% went to "consultants" and texting/email spamming.
They sure wasted money getting my info because I blocked the first email.
Damn!!! I want a job there! Just kidding
I was told that Hogg's salary was within the normal range for the President of a PAC of this size. Is this true?
I honestly don’t know.
People like to shit on consultants and it is warranted at times but they are often necessary, particularly if you don’t know how to do something or simply don’t have the bandwidth. I would not want to chance screwing up an FEC filing so it makes sense to pay for someone knows what they are doing.
Disclosure: I worked in the consulting world, including at one firm who at least did their site. (I didn’t work on it as it was after I left.)
Digital has retainers, ad commissions, or things like building a website. Comms consultants may be a firm that has relationships with reporters and pitch on your behalf, track media coverage, draft materials. It’s very time consuming.
If you didn’t have any experience in these areas, you’re probably screwed on these fronts. A poor web presence will hurt an organization’s credibility. Often times, a retainer will get a client access to several people at far less than if they hired in house and covered salary and employee benefits.
Scrutiny is always good and the industry is not without need for reforms. But I think there’s a reflexive “ew consultants!” thing that persists for some people on a very surface-level understanding.
As I note later in the thread, I recognize that there’s a big difference between a PAC (which has serious tax/legal/FEC compliance rules) and what I do…but that’s kind of my point: 10% overhead may be naively low, but you’re saying 70% isn’t too high??
Did any of the supported candidates win? I see Carranza did not?
Unfortunately the IRS has been depleted so that they are like 8 yrs behind in their audits. There are so many red flags with this PAC, I've posted the payroll tax issues on your first post on this. The other 🚩is the credit card line. Is that on the Income Stmt or Balance Sheet? 1/
If on IS, that's incorrect way of reporting, all expenses should be dispursed to the proper expense line. If on the BS, the line should be zero, used as a pass through account to be disbursed. I'm not going to go into debits and credits here, but it's another thing that's weird and could 2/
Be hiding all sorts of personal items paid via the PAC's credit card. It looks like most of the lyft, food and misc charges are personal too. Basically PACs are a grift and Hogg has taped into it.
Those food, ride share and travel expenses really cause my eye. Seemed extremely excessive. Like if a teenager got a hold of their parents credit card and went on a year long vacation. I would love to know more about those, but 🤷🏻♀️.
The 1.2M was wasted on Kristen Carrenza because she lost. That's not something to brag about, yet Hogg's fans think he is the savior of the Democratic Party.