Friday, April 17, 2009

Motive behind Barker loan will dictate its importance

I've finally gotten to take a few minutes to look at Tim Barker's campaign finance reports and there's a few things that I think can be deduced.

First, the timing of the loan seems somewhat important to me. The loan itself is interesting, but the motive behind it I think is more important. Did he loan himself $100,000 because he plans on self-financing his campaign or did he do it to inflate his numbers so that he can continue trying to raise money?

I personally think it's the latter. If he planned to self finance he would have made a large donation to himself in the last reporting period and made a splash. And I'd think it would have been larger than $100K. Also, as I alluded above, the loan is dated 3/31/09, the last day of reporting. That seems to indicate to me that he needed to shore up his numbers for this period.

However, if I'm wrong and he plans to just pay for everything himself, then yea, $100K is a big deal. But it's not enough by itself, it'll take at least nine more of those, if not more. The question then becomes, how much does the guy have? I don't think he has that much. Which brings me back to the motivation behind the loan.

I've only checked a few of Barker's donors, and only the ones without a Pratt address, as I'm going to assume a lot of those are personal contacts not based on political views. However, those I did check either have no prior information or are tied to moderate Republicans or Democrats in some way. A few have given to Kansas Traditional Republican Majority, so somewhere along the line Barker knows a few people. Either that or he's getting his money's worth out of his consulting firm, Dublin Group. Will he be able to convince donors he has a chance now that both Tracey Mann and Sue Boldra are in the race?

Only time and several more finance reports will tell.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where does Barker get $100,000 when his company is bankrupt?

Anonymous said...

Good thing for Barker that he did the loan this quarter. Seeing how it went over will likely discourage he, or the rest of the candidates, from trying it in the future.

That would be a good show of faith though.

Wasinger stops taking donations from New York and Mass., opts to loan campaign money.

Anonymous said...

If you got the cash, spend it. I think the question is whether or not he actually has the cash.

Anonymous said...

Come on now. When will everyone lighten up on Barker's ethanol endeavour. It brought in millions in tax revenue and hundreds of new jobs to Pratt....

Good thing daddy has a deep pocketbook. He'll keep the campaign afloat for at least a while longer.