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4th District hopeful Connie Stokes owes herself $70K
Connie Stokes has been an official candidate for Congress for two days, and she already owes herself almost $70,000.
Stokes’ initial financial disclosure, filed for the period ending March 31, reported $18,076 in debts and obligations to herself, including:
- $5,000 for “campaign manager,”
- $500 for “campaign consultant,”
- $4,641 for her qualifying fee,
- $2,851 for yard signs,
- $1,010 for a campaign fund-raiser,
- $725 for pens and bumper stickers, and
- $1,076 for travel expenses
Some of the expenses, such as her qualifying fee, had not even been paid when she filed the disclosure April 12. The DeKalb County commissioner filed qualifying papers and paid her fee Monday to seek the Democratic nomination for U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson’s 4th District congressional seat.
In addition, Stokes reported lending $9,130 in personal funds to the campaign.
She also carried over $42,700 in personal loans from her 2004 run for Congress, when she finished fourth in the Democratic primary with 5 percent of the vote.
All told, the candidate reported owing herself $69,906.
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2 Responses to “4th District hopeful Connie Stokes owes herself $70K”
Right now she is not obligated to anyone! How refreshing!
no doubt the point to the article is “paying herself”, not owing herself. This is the practice that allows so-called candidates to live off their campaigns.
It’s easy–as long as you have specious uses of funds that all somehow end up back in your pocket. Also very easy to inflate expense figures and charge off “dual use” items.
The biggest racket is carrying over campaign war chests from campaign to campaign, so that eventually it becomes impossible to track. There’s a county commissioner in DeKalb who probably taught all of the commissioners there everything they now do. Can you imagine a county commissioner with over $400,000 sitting in her campaign fund from year to year?
She pays her spouse a campaign advisor salary, pays his business office as a campaign office and pays other family members hourly wages. None of them have any visible source of other income.
…and borrowing…they can BORROW from the account for personal use..as long as they pay it BACK…when?
Not mysteriously, the state ethics commission–or elkections whatever avoids complaints about this like the plague. Why? Because they all do it–some are just more “serious” about it (“entitled”, “fraudulent”) than most.