Think the National Debt is a Problem? You haven't seen the latest AZGOP FEC Report

What's wrong with this picture?

Total AZGOP debt, according to the FEC Reports:

January 2011 - $17,689.81

February 2011 - $7,505.41

March 2011 - $73,616.67!!!!!!!!!!

So, in one month, the debt owed by Tom Morrissey's Republican Party increased 10x?

What do you suppose the debt is for?  Well, thanks to the magic of the internet, I can tell you:

Name	Amount This Period	Nature of Debt
Gammage & Burnham	10000.00	Legal fees
T-Mobile	5149.31	Cell phones
Cox Communications	683.87	High speed internet
Maricopa County Treasurer	4865.89	Property taxes
Americopy	1954.66	Printing
Aristotle International, Inc.	2640.00	FEC Reporting software
Steve Brown Direct Mail	2052.00	Party direct mail
CBIZ MHM, LLC	7422.15	FEC Reporting
Southwest Publishing & Mailing Co	5892.11	Party direct mail
Elaine Gangluff	1327.68	Reimbursement
Strategic Fundraising, Inc.	7295.00	Party telemarketing
Political Media, Inc.	14334.00	Web page consulting
Salmon, Lewis & Weldon	10000.00	Legal fees

(Here's the link to the report. Debts start on page 43, so you can play along)


Last month, the only debt on the books was $7422.55 payable to CBIZ MHM, LLC for FEC Reporting, and $83 to Political Media, Inc. for Web Page Consulting.


So in one month the party racked up $20,000 in legal fees, $5,000 for cell phones, and $14,000 for web page consulting?


Why did the AZGOP suddenly need to spend $20,000 on legal fees?  $10,000 each to two different law firms.


What was the $14,000 charge for "web page consulting"?  Did they really pay $14,000 for a new flashy menu on the AZGOP website?


And what's the deal with the $5,000 owed to T-Mobile?  $5,000 is a lot of cell phones.  There is also $300 in charges to Verizon wireless on Schedule B.  Holy phone bills.


Even more confusing are the entries to Cox Communications.  There are 3 entries for Cox in March: $680.53, $48.55 on Schedule B, and the debt of $683.87, all under the memo line "High Speed Internet".  That's a hell of a lot of internet for one month.


Total receipts for the month were just shy of $34,000.  So the debt for March is slightly more than double the income.


I'm sure Tom Morrissey will have a perfectly good explanation for the vast amount of debt the party racked up in one month.  Actually, strike that.  I expect that he'll keep silent, since that's been his strategy so far.

NOTE:  Read an interesting article by Steve Calabrese on this subject