Lawn Sign Wars Update; and a Look at Campaign Finance

We have two items which we believe to be worthy of discussion this morning, both involving our ongoing 2007 municipal election:

1) Lawn Sign Wars. Aggressive campaign sign vandalism is developing into one of the more intriguing features of Emerald City election 2007; and we have more to report on that topic this morning. We'll do a quick review of past incidents first, just to bring everybody up to speed on where this story stands to date:

On August 24 we reported an incident wherein mayoral candidate Neil Hansen caught Boss Godfrey Sturmabteilung Bob Geiger red-handed, in the pre-midnight darkness of August 23, in the act of switching Godfrey signs for those of Hansen. This event was also the subject of a Salt Lake Tribune write-up on August 30.

On the first of September we briefly mentioned a truly odd and interesting twist to this story: that Little Bobby had again been involved in yet another lawn sign interference incident, and was once more caught in flagrante delicto, this time with a Godfrey opposition council candidate's sign in his hand.

This morning we have more to add to the facts concerning the latter event. We now have a report of the incident from the candidate/witness herself, the Hon. Councilwoman Amy Wicks. Ms. Wicks yesterday decided to go public with the story, and provided us a brief written statement. Here's what allegedly happened on the afternoon of September 1, according to Councilwoman Wicks.

We've been involved in lots of municipal election campaigns over the years, and have become aware at various times of incidences where overzealous candidates (or their agents) have been caught (and sometimes prosecuted) for interfering with opponent's campaign signs. Never once however, in thirty years campaign experience, have we ever seen an agent for any political candidate who is actually so dumb as to get caught doing it twice.

We don't know what's going on with Little Bobby. Perhaps he's just a slow learner. We would of course be curious to know what our gentle readers think about all this. And consider the odds of not just one, but two, candidates catching the same fellow interfering with their signs, within a little over one week's time. We know that Emerald City is a fairly small town, but the probability of the near simultaneous convergence of these events borders on the ridiculous.

2) Campaign Finance. Toward this topic, we turn again to our earlier cited September 1 WCF article, in which gentle reader Danny shared his thoughts concerning this Salt Lake Tribune story, reporting on the August 31 campaign finance disclosure statements filed by each of the Emerald City mayoral candidates. In the course of the ensuing reader comment discussion, at least one reader queried whether it might be possible for your blogmeister to obtain and post complete information on those misguided souls who have contributed their hard-earned dollars to inflate Boss Godfrey's bloated campaign war chest to the truly-obscene level of $100,000 -- and to that gentle reader we happily say the answer is "Yes."

In that connection we have uploaded to our storage site a pdf file, composed of the following items:

1) Matthew Godfrey's August 31 campaign finance disclosure statement, consisting of pages 1 through 8; and,

2) A one-page excerpt from Mayor Godfrey's 2004 final report of campaign contributions and expenditures for his successful 2003 campaign, consisting of page 9 of this pdf file.

As to the first eight pages, we recommend that you read attentively, folks. Within these pages you'll find a list of the names of those those sodden souls who don't give a hoot for honest and ethical government. Although we're sure that some of these folks are simply ignorant of Boss Godfrey's methods and mis-deeds, we also find the names of a whole boatload of dyed-in-the-wool Friends of Matt (FOM) who are well aware of what Boss Godfrey's mode of operations, and plainly beholden to him for his many "favors."

And to expand the discussion on this topic for the benefit of those readers with an eye for detail, we direct our detail-oriented readers to page 9 of this pdf file, which shows the balance of monies remaining in Godfrey's campaign coffers upon the conclusion of the legally mandated 2003 campaign finance reporting period. At line 6 of this document you'll see a calculated figure of $37,788.02, which represents the account balance carried forward upon conclusion of his 2003 campaign.

Examining Mayor Godfrey's 2007 filing (pages 1-8,) we find no reference to this amount. Boss Godfrey's 2003 campaign carryover fund has thus vanished into thin air, in an accounting sense.

Although Utah campaign law imposes no restrictions as to the disposition of these moneys, we believe that applicable statutes do impose upon Boss Godfrey the obligation to account for these moneys. Although it would be perfectly lawful for Godfrey to blow this sum on a trip to Paris, or a wild weekend in Vegas, we believe that Utah campaign finance law nevertheless imposes upon repeatedly-elected officials an obligation to donors and the members of the general public alike, to explain how campaign donations have been spent.

At the moment, we believe Boss Godfrey may be in technical noncompliance with Utah campaign financial disclosure requirements, in other words.

We'll do a little further research on this, and do an update if we find any substantive information on the subject. Right now we're just "shooting from the hip" on this.

In the meantime the floor is open. We're dying to hear what's on our reader's minds this morning.