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Governor Carcieri’s political coffers are almost empty.
Only one year into his final four-year term, the term-limited Republican governor is spending more out of his “campaign” account than he is taking in, according to his latest report to the state Board of Elections.
After paying $21,395 in expenses over the last quarter, he had only $3,002.83 left.
How does a governor carry on his political life — send wedding and funeral flowers, consult with paid political strategists, buy ads in community newsletters and the like — with only $3,000 in his political account? The response from his press secretary, Jeff Neal: “Stay tuned. We’ve got three more years in office, and as I said, the governor will continue to raise money as necessary.”
A $1,000-a-head July 26 fundraiser at the University Club helped. Carcieri raised a total of $17,900 during the quarter that ended Sept. 30 from Republican loyalists and even a few state workers such as the $104,986-a-year executive director of the state’s 911-emergency office, Raymond R. LaBelle, who gave him $1,000. His only political action committee (PAC) donation came from the MetLife Political Fund, $500.
Expenses included a final rent payment on his closed campaign office; $5,000 in September to a Crofton, Md., consulting company called OnMessage,; $4,160 to Crestar Mfg., in East Greenwich, for what is obliquely described in Carcieri’s report to the Board of Elections as “donations”; and $3,500 for what is described as “COBRA reimbursements” to the campaign by Stephen Owren, a Carcieri brother-in-law who, at one point, was the governor’s only full-time campaign staffer.
COBRA is the federal acronym for a law that gives workers who have been laid off — or lost their health insurance for other reasons — to buy in at their employer’s group rate for limited periods of time.
Asked about these expenses, Neal said the Carcieri campaign office on Knight Street, Warwick, has closed and “no longer has any employees,” so Owren “pays the campaign and the campaign pays the insurer” for his health care.
He said the OnMessage payment was a leftover bill from the governor’s 2006 reelection drive, as was a previously unexplained $42,000 bill for polling that showed up on an earlier Carcieri report. He said the payments to Crestar were for the reproduction of prints from the Scenes of Rhode Island art competition the governor hosts each year. Neal said they go to “individuals, visiting dignitaries” and “to community organizations to be used in fundraising auctions.”
The state’s politicos have until the end of this month to file reports on their political fundraising and spending during the quarter that ended Sept. 30, so stay tuned for a glance at where each of Carcieri’s would-be successors are in their early fundraising. Carcieri filed early.
But at this point, former Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey has more in the bank than Carcieri does: $19,775.
And at last report this past summer, Providence Mayor David Cicilline had far more: $243,038.01; Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, 37,697.19; state Treasurer Frank T. Caprio, $300,945.85; Attorney General Patrick Lynch, 32,930.77, and Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis, $30,350.76. As of Friday, none had filed third quarter reports.
By Katherine Gregg, Scott MacKay and Steve Peoples
-- Journal staff writers
