I want to agree with all the kudos today for Scott Dibble for Senate and then add one more piece, since several people asked about how Roche could finance TV ads in these final days of the campaign. I went over to the Campaign Finance Board office yesterday to look up a couple of things (on my own time, as always), and while there took a look at Roche's report. As someone suggested, he indeed has not agreed to abide by our state system of checkoff/public financing/spending limits that has been a national model for clean government. (While it's true that this is a voluntary system, we are also free to criticize him in the arena of political opinion, for failing to participate in a system that we believe promotes clean government). Because of this, he is not subject to spending limits, but also is not subject to the $20,000 limit on what candidates for senate can spend on themselves. The report shows that through the August 19, 2002 reporting period, he contributed about $5K to himself, loaned himself about another $6K, received contributions of over $2K from people named Roche (one assumes family), and received another $2K from other donors. So through August 19, he had about $15K to spend on the primary, roughly comparable to the $18K that Scott Dibble had raised in the same period. What's interesting is that on August 29, he amended his report to show that he had loaned himself an additional $21K to bring the total to $36K. That's a lot of money for a state senate primary! And one can only wonder if the loan was made purposely after the reports were due in and campaigns had already looked at each other's reports. Maybe they thought no one would see it. Maybe they're going to loan themselves a lot more money this week. Again, there's nothing illegal about all this. However, voters are free to decide they don't like it and add it to the already long list of reasons to vote for Scott Dibble. Don Jorovsky (about two miles north of Minneapolis) (Postscript: I used the word "about" above because he contributed $4920, which I would say is about $5K, and he loaned himself a total of $26,980, which I would say is about $27K and not worth quibbling about) Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com |
- [Mpls] Scott Dibble Annie Young
- Don Jorovsky
