This year SarahPAC has depleted much of its once prodigious cash reserve, spending about a quarter-million dollars more than it raised, according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission.
SarahPAC’s financial malaise coincides with Palin’s own star power dimming: Fox News in June declined to renew Palin’s contract as a commentator, and the Sarah Palin Channel, a subscription-based online TV feed Palin launched in 2014, is going dark this week.
While SarahPAC’s $562,000 cash-on-hand figure is better than what most political committees could boast, it’s the PAC’s lowest total since mid-2009, the year Palin founded the operation. Since late 2009, SarahPAC has almost always carried more than $1 million on its books and never less than $800,000.
So where did the money go you ask?
Some of the top recent SarahPAC expenditures have included:
- $230,250 on consultants, including $80,500 to longtime aide and PAC treasurer Timothy Crawford
- $139,932 on direct mail, produced by conservative fundraising firm HSP Direct
- $128,482 on postage, printing, and related supplies
- $82,213 on travel and accommodations, including airfare, hotels, car and SUV rentals, travel agents, and taxis. The Waldorf Astoria in New York City ($4,562) and Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas ($797) were two particularly pricy line items. The $3,854 SarahPAC paid a New York–based limousine company came on Feb. 19, right after Palin appeared at the staging of Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary special, where she sat in the audience next to musician Taylor Swift.
- $48,000 on speech writing, mostly to Aries Petra Consulting, a small limited liability company registered in Virginia and based in Los Angeles
- $37,354 on Internet fundraising through Austin, Texas–based Harris Media LLC, which works for numerous conservative politicians
Yet, during the first half of 2015, SarahPAC only spent $25,000 on candidate contributions—less than 4 percent of its overall expenditures.
At this point I would be very surprised if the press were shocked by the fact that Palin uses the PAC as her own personal ATM machine.
Courtesy of Public Integrity. |
Speaking of winning, Palin has at least one ardent admirer left.
Donald Trump.
Courtesy of Right Wing Watch:
Yesterday, Donald Trump appeared on “The Palin Update,” a show dedicated to all things Palin. After Trump hailed Palin as a “tough and smart” leader who bravely stood up to “disgusting lies,” host Kevin Scholla asked the GOP presidential candidate, “If there is a Trump administration, could you see picking up the phone, giving the governor a call and picking her brain on some things, or perhaps having her along in some official capacity.”
“I’d love that,” Trump replied. “Because she really is somebody who knows what’s happening and she’s a special person, she’s really a special person and I think people know that.”
“Everybody loves her,” he added. Trump went on to say that unlike the former half-term Alaska governor, his current Republican rivals are “weak” and “ineffective” leaders “to a degree that’s actually almost hard to believe.”
Voters, Trump explained, “like the Sarah Palin kind of strength, you just don’t see very much of it anymore.”
Wow! Did Trump actually slam every one of his political opponents by suggesting that they were weaker and less effective than Sarah Palin? Ouch, that's going to leave a mark!
And who is this "everybody" that he claims love Palin? I live in Alaska, you know the place where she lives, and you would be hard pressed to find even one here.
But the really big question is who in the world thought it was in Trump's best interests to have him talking on "The Palin Update?" I cover Palin almost everyday, and even I did not even realize that was still a thing anymore.