The Truth behind Judd Legum's Fundraising

Liberal darling/mudslinger/trial lawyer/factually challenged blogger Judd Legum is telling anybody who will listen that he raised over $65,000 for his campaign for the House of Delegates in District 30. It's on his blog. There was a press release. It was tweeted. It's all over the place like he won an award or something.

Of course, what do the numbers actually mean....

For starters, let's take a look at this claim from Legum:

I was extremely pleased with all the early financial support to my campaign. Eighty-five percent of contributions were $100 or less and we didn’t accept a penny from special interest PACs.

Which of course depends on your definition of contribution. When you talk about the actual number of contributors, then yes of Legum's 538 total contributors, 459 of them made donations of $100.00 or less. That was a total amount, however, of $22,644.32. Of Legum's total dollars raised during the 2009 filing period, only barely one-third (34.6 percent) were raised from these "small" donors.

Except that's not really the case either. For example, an Emily Legum of Annapolis made seven different $50 contributions during the period, for an aggregate total of $350. Debbie Berger Fox of Washington, DC made two seperate $100 contributions. David Cho of New York City made 8 seperate contributions that total $220.47 in addition to a contribution of $250. Nancy Coley of Annapolis made three contributions under the $100 "limit" that aggregated $175. JoAnn Escobosa of Arnold made three $50 contributions. And it goes on like this. So while the number of "contributions" of less than $100 is accurate, the aggregated total comes from a smaller pool than Legum's press release would imply.

And speaking of contributions, where did these contributions come from? Glad you asked:

• Arizona: 3
• California: 38
• Colorado: 1
• District of Columbia: 111
• Florida: 4
• Georgia: 4
• Iowa: 1
• Illinois: 7
• Kansas: 1
• Kentucky: 1
• Louisiana: 2
• Maine: 1
  
• Maryland: 231
• Massachusetts: 13
• Michigan: 1
• Minnesota: 2
• Missouri: 2
• New Jersey: 7
• New York: 37
• North Carolina: 1
• Ohio: 4
• Oregon: 3
• Pennsylvania: 16
• Rhode Island: 1
• South Carolina: 3
• Texas: 5
• Virginia: 26
• Vermont: 1
• Washington: 9
• West Virgnia: 1
• Wisconsin: 1

So to try and make the point for you here, only 42.9% of Legum's contributors live in the state of Maryland. We're not even talking about his district. We're talking about the state of Maryland.

Which now leads the question of how much of Legum's money comes from Maryland and how much comes from out of state. Glad you asked, because of Legum's total amount raised only $18,908 comes from in state donors. That means that only 28.8 percent of Judd Legum's money has been donated by Marylanders. As a matter of fact a nearly equal amount of Legum's funds were raised from residents of the District of Columbia ($18,610).

And that leaves us with the question of the who is giving money to Judd Legum. Well, the list contains a who's who of federal lobbyists with ties to the Clintion Political Machine. You can corraborate the list here. Some of the "dignitaries" include:"

• Disgraced former Annapolis Mayoral Nominee Zina Pierre, whose campaign appartus donated $250 to Legum as the scandal around her campaign exploded, and then gave a personal $100 donation in November.
• Hillary Clinton apparatchik Howard Wolfson maxed out for a $4,000 donation.
  
• Bill Clinton flunky John Podesta, the former White House Chief of Staff who was instrumental in the Marc Rich pardon scandal and now spends qualtiy time as a UFO-truther.
• Patti Solis Doyle, another prominent Clintonista, donated $1,000.
• Former MoveOn.org Director Tom Mattize was another $1,000 donor.
  
• Former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe donated $1,000 a few months after blowing his chance to be Governor of Virginia. You may also remember Mr. McAuliffe from his starring role in the Global Crossing scandal.

And our final question leads me to this: why would any out of state resident donate $4,000 to a political hack running for state office. Wjat's in for them. Well, four individuals donated the maximum to Legum's campaign account, accounting for nearly one-quarter of his total amount raised. One of them is Wolfson, but the other three donors have an interesting, albeit out of state connection.

Dr. Rose Thayaparan practices Cytopathology and Anatomic & Clinical Pathologyst St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. Her husband, P.W. Tayaparan, also donated $4,000. He used to work at the META Group, an information technology consulting firm in Stamford, Conn that was purchased by the Gartner Group. The only other $4,000 was their daughter Beatrice Wilderman. Why these three individuals would invest $12,000 in a Maryland race is frankly beyond comprehension at this point.

Judd Legum will tell everybody he knows that he has raised $65,000. But elections such as this one cannot be bought. They certainly cannot be bought by funds rasied from out of state donors with no connection to District 30. Maryland Democrats should be ashamed of thesmelves for allowing a candidate with the ego the size of Legum to become the poster child for their fundraising excesses.....and Legum himself should be ashamed that Sam Arora who was lower on the total pole than Legum managed to outrasie him in Montgomery County.

The moral of the story is that Judd Legum is selling himself to the highest bidder, whether or not that bidder is even a resident of Maryland. I hope the people of District 30 truly understand what they are getting if they vote for them this November. They won't be getting a Delegate who is serving them; they will be getting a Delegate beholden to out of state financial interests and the Clinton political machine. That's something the residents of District 30 and the people of Maryland as a whole simply cannot afford...