11 January 2020 — 1126 mst

Debo raises $4k in 4th qtr 2019

Flathead legislative filings roundup

 Revised,  12 January.

Five Republicans and two Democrats filed for Flathead legislative districts during the first two days of filings. There will be contested Republican primaries in two districts, and probably in several more by the time filing closes on 9 March. One Democratic primary is a possibility.

Filings thus far

HD-3, Columbia Falls. Appointed incumbent Democrat Debo Powers, and Republican Braxton Mitchell. Democrat Sylvia Borstad filed a C-1 late last year, raising the possibility of a Democratic primary. Mitchell told Flathead Memo he does not expect primary opposition.

HD-5, Whitefish. Two-term incumbent Democrat David Fern.

HD-6, SW of Whitefish, NW of Kalispell. Republican rookie Amy Regier. The seat is open.

HD-7, old downtown Kalispell. Three-term incumbent Republican Frank Garner. He’s had primary opposition in the past.

HD-9, Evergreen. One-term Republican incumbent David Dunn.

SD-2, N & S of Columbia Falls. Former Republican legislator Jerry O’Neil, and rookie Republican Norm Nunnally. This could be an entertaining primary.

Debo Powers’ powerful fundraising

 Revised,  12 January. Powers raised $3,995 in the fourth quarter of 2019. She has $3,604 in cash. That’s an impressive total for a legislative race at this date. Approximately three-fifths of the money came from Montanans, who comprise approximately half of the donors. Powers made two contributions to herself, a cash donation of $180 and an in kind donation of $70.

The cash numbers from the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices’ CERs database:

I downloaded the idiosyncratic CVS file from CERs, converted it to tab delimited text, imported the data into Excel and Filemaker Pro, and initially came up with different numbers because the CERs CSV files not include a field for in kind contributions. That information has to be obtained by examining the donation records online. After adding an in kind, yes or no, field to my database, I was able to provide an accurate accounting.

The CERs CSV export file has serious defects apart from the inconvenience of using an oddball delimiter. In kind contributions are not identified. In the Powers file, her name was omitted from records containing a Contribution Type field with a value of “1”, the code for a candidate’s contribution. These are not trivial omissions.

A second problem, one created by laws predating mandatory online filing, is the handling of donations of less than $35. COPP provides the total of small contributions, but not their number or geographic distribution. Small donors need not be identified by name, but should be listed by amount and Zip Code. The next legislature can fix that quickly, but will do so only if plenty of public pressure is applied to legislators.

Solutions to the delimiter problem:

1. Change the CVS extension to TXT, then open the file in a spreadsheet. I use Excel for the Mac. That should bring up dialogue boxes giving you a choice of delimiters. Enter | and you should be in business.


2. Open the CSV file in a text editor such as BBEdit for the Mac, which is what I use. Replace the |s with tabs and save as text with a TXT extension. If your text editor provides a Zap Gremlins function that removes hidden control characters and cleans up the file, run it. Make sure you choose a text encoding and line ending that are compatible with your database and spreadsheet software.

Let’s cut candidates some slack on campaign finance reports

I’ve worked with campaign finance reports for decades. Most contain errors, sometimes major, most times minor. Big campaigns hire professional compliance officers and treasurers, but in Montana, legislative level campaigns depend on volunteers, many of them tyros. They try to get it right, but sometimes they make mistakes.

Sometimes donors contribute to the confusion. Virtually every campaign receives contributions that are over the limit and must be refunded. And some donors, bloodyminded about privacy, refuse to supply legally required data on occupations and employment.

Campaigns also create problems when they employ evasive terms to describe expenditures. Usually this is inadvertent, the result of rookies learning the game. But when professionals are evasive, their prevarications almost always are deliberate and must be punished.