The latest letter from the Knox County Election Commission came in the mail the other day. This one told me I was required to file a “pre-primary campaign financial disclosure report covering the period from January 16, 2020 through February 22, 2020.” I submitted my report to the Election Commission on Monday, February 24, 2020. You can find it at their website. As I did with my Year End Supplemental Report, which I had to file back in January, I’m giving you the details of my report here.

As I started to write this post yesterday, though, I was sitting at my desk and I spied the $5 donation I received back at the end of January. The only donation I’ve received from anyone other than myself. I had filled out my original Financial Disclosure Form in another room and ended up leaving out that information. It was too late to get the new form to the Election Commission yesterday, so I finished it up last night and took it over today around lunchtime. They’ve already scanned it and it’s available for your review here.

I note on the updated Financial Disclosure, I could have just updated page 2 and included the $5 among the unitemized contributions of less than $100. But, I’m trying to be as transparent as possible, so I itemized the donation and included it on page 3.

As with the last disclosure, I’m going to put the info in a post like this with what I’m filing. Here you go…

My Donations:

  • In addition to the $5 donation, I donated $495 to myself. I made it equal $500 with the single donation because I’ve been keeping track of my campaign funds in my separate bank account for those purposes. I’ve still got the $5 bill that was given to me sitting here on the desk. I may frame it some day. We’ll see how the campaign goes.

My In-Kind Contributions:

  • I had no in-kind contributions.

My Expenditures:

  • I used supercheapsigns.com to buy yard signs. Cost was $469.16.

There were pages on the form for Itemized Statement of Loans and Itemized Statement of Obligations. I didn’t have any of those this period.

The Summary page shows that I had $500 in receipts this period and $469.16 in expenditures. My cash on hand is $436.55.

I could have avoided detailed disclosure because both my contributions (including in-kind) AND my expenditures were below $1000. I’m not hiding anything, though, so I just filled out the full form.

One last note here. I didn’t do it after the last disclosure, but I’m going to do it this time. The Republicans I’m running against raised about $30,000 between them in the last report and did the same this time. $60,000 dollars raised to try to win a job that pays $1,000 a month. I’m going to write a full post before the election on March 3 talking about the money raised and where it comes from. Because big money is the problem in politics. And there’s some serious big money being spent in this District 4 race. Stay tuned for that.