Thread: AZ:What did Raul Grijalva spend his money on? He ate it

10/15/2010
Filed under: Revolution Archives—
What did Raul Grijalva spend his money on? He ate it.
Rep. Raul Grijalva had raised over $550,000 for his campaign, and yet as of August 4th, he had less than $80,000 cash on hand. What happened to all that money? To date, Mr. Grijalva hasn’t run any television advertising. He hasn’t flooded the district with mailers or radio. So where did all that money go? He ate it.

At the end of the last filing period, Rep. Grijalva reported spending $90,959 on food and entertainment. In addition, Mr. Grijalva had spent $104,849 for professional fundraising services. That’s more than 35 percent of his total campaign contributions wasted on fundraising and fancy dinners.

Most professional fundraisers charge 5 to 10 percent for their services, Mr. Grijalva paid close to 20 percent for those services. And while buying dinner for your staff and volunteers as well as providing food at fundraising events is common on the campaign trail, it’s unheard of for a major campaign to spend nearly a sixth of their total contributions on food and entertainment.

“A half million dollars in Southern Arizona can go a long way,â€

Good one! Maybe we can ditch this leech.