Where Did Ron Paul's Money Go?

If I was a Ron Paul donor, I’d be feeling pretty ripped off these days. Plenty of guys (and they were mostly guys) were wandering around forums bragging about how they were scrimping and saving in order to ship money off to help fund the “Revolution.” While, as I’ve said before, I despise Paul and most of what he stands for, one can’t help but feel a degree of admiration for such ardent enthusiasm. Of course, when you scrimp and save to win, it’s empowering. When you do it to lose every single primary and caucus that you compete in, it’s got to be disheartening.

Some of the people who donated to the Paul campaign are surely wondering what happened to all of that money. Frankly, I’ve been wondering the same thing - $30 Million is a lot of money to blow through without visible effect. Sure, Mitt Romney blew through far more than that – but I saw plenty of evidence of where that money went. I don’t recall a single flashy ad campaign from Paul – certainly none that could have cost even a fraction of that amount.

After a discussion on this the other night, I decided to go and do some digging in Ron Paul’s finance reports. I didn’t expect to find anything too shocking. I figured that, well, the same thing probably happened to Paul as happened to Howard Dean in 2004 – he wasn’t prepared to run a national campaign and, when he did, expenses spiralled out of control, with plenty of unscrupulous consultants cashing in at the expense of a candidate in way over his head and, beyond that, with plenty of money being wasted on essentially improvising a Presidential campaign.
Certainly, there appears to be some of that. A lot of Ron Paul’s advertising dollars went to what seem to be second-tier companies with shoddy websites (something I’ve learned, over the years, is the be suspicious of any company which claims to be a modern firm but which has a website which appears to be at least ten years old).

For example, one wonders what exactly Paul’s donors got for the $120,000 paid to MPrinting Graphics, a firm controlled by Paul’s Congressional campaign manager which doesn’t even appear to have a website, for television advertising production in the week after Super Tuesday. I’m not suggesting that anything illegal or immoral occurred here, of course. One just wonders what ads those paid for and what experience that firm had in the field.

Indeed, paying $162,051 in the space of six days to a business controlled by your Congressional campaign manager in the week after Super Tuesday creates, at the very least, an appearance of impropriety. Especially when one recalls that, between Super Tuesday and the March Texas Primary, there was speculation that Paul was in trouble in his home district.
Nothing illegal about hiring your friends, of course, but one has to wonder how the people who donated money that they needed themselves to Ron Paul because they believed so strongly in the cause feel about their money being spent in such a fashion.

Even more interesting is the $994,339 that the Paul campaign spent – roughly 3.5% of all the money that the Paul campaign spent – at a firm known as “Campaign Marketing Strategies Inc.” based in Alexandria, Virginia. The firm has no website. It appears to have no phone number. I can find no description of what it does. The address provided by the campaign – and in what records of the company I could find – it for what appears to be a private home.
A Campaign Marketing Strategies Inc. was registered in Virginia on July 17th of last year. According to Virginia records, the firm’s registered agent is one “Chris Cupit.” I have no idea if this is the same Chris Cupit who was tied to the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming scandal – and who was seemingly connected with the Constitution Party's 2004 candidate - but it seems possible.

The money is generically listed as being for “telecommunications” with no further elaboration. The other large expenses made under this heading appear to have been for robo-calling. Though, in the other examples I examined, the companies all had the basics of business – you know, things like offices, phone numbers, web sites, and so forth.

So, what was that $1 Million for? I don’t know. I couldn’t call up Campaign Marketing Strategies Inc. to ask what they do, since they don’t have an office, a web site, an e-mail address, or a phone number.

Now, let’s be very clear – I’m no t suggesting, hinting, or even implying that Ron Paul ran off with the money or that he blew it as a patron of the Emperor’s Club VIP or whatever else. I’m quite convinced that’s not the case. What I’m suggesting is, from a libertarian viewpoint, probably worse: I’m suggesting that he squandered it.
Caveat emptor, as the Romans used to say.

Paul’s personal history – marketing ghost-written ultra-right newsletters whose contents he disavowed as soon as they became inconvenient – ought to have been taken as a sign by his supporters. First, that he’s not a man above attempting to enrich himself through populist opportunism. Second, that someone whose entire life up until this point was strictly small-time might not be up to the challenge of effectively managing tens of millions of dollars.

Where did the money go? It evaporated. Some of it went to his friends. The rest of it – most of it probably – went to smooth-talking consultants who bamboozled him as effectively as Lyle Lanley did when he sold the people of Springfield a used Monorail.