Citizens Audit of Speaker Ralston's 2013-2014 Campaign Expenses.
I am performing a citizens audit of David Ralston's most recent campaign expense report. I have loaded his expense transactions into a spreadsheet so I can view them from different perspectives.
In the 2013-2014 election cycle Ralston had expenses of $1.2 million. Some of these expenses were for his own primary campaign. He won his primary on June 20, 2014. He did not have an opponent in the General Election.
As I have explained elsewhere, in Georgia, elected public officials can use campaign contributions for the "fulfillment and retention of office". These expenses should be marked a "political" rather than "campaign".
About 9000 people voted in the primary and Ralston got about 2/3 of the vote.
The largest single recipient of Ralston expense money is Parlay Political LLC which is a election consulting firm based in Athens. Ralston paid Parlay $240,000. Why did he pay them all of this money? What did they do for him? It is not possible that all of this money was spent on Ralston's primary election.
Candidates are allowed to directly give their campaign contribution money to other candidates. Ralston did this alot. But when this is done it must be done within the limits of the law. Ralston gave the maximum to many other candidates.
The question here is did Ralston pay Parlay to provide election consulting services to other candidates. I believe that to do this would be a clear violation of the law.
It is possible that Ralston paid Parlay for election services around issues and not candidates. That would probably be acceptable but I do not see a provision for that in the Georgia Campaign law.
Anyway I am looking for a way to possibly raise this as an issue. In order to do that officially would probably require the submission of a formal ethics complaint.
Here is a list off all of the expenses that Ralston had with Parlay Political LLC. You can see that date of the transaction and the purpose. Note the use of the word "campaign" or "political" in the text of the purpose. (I believe that "campaign" should refer only to expenses of Ralston's primary campaign and nothing else. All others should be labeled "political".)
If you have any thoughts about what I am doing, please do not hesitate to let me know.
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