Unethical Roadmap to Defeat

Adam Puharic's Ethical Road Map is a farce.

A key component to the road map is the web posting of the county party's ELEC reports. Last year's fourth quarter report, the one that discloses the bulk of funds raised and spent for the election, was never posted. This year's first quarterly report was recently posted. It is an embarrassment and raises some important questions.

At first glance, it would appear that the Monmouth GOP is following in the footsteps of the Bergen County GOP. We're apparently broke. We started the year with just under $11,000 on hand and $4200 in unpaid bills. By the end of March there were two major fundraisers, The Lincoln Day dinner and the Chairman's Birthday party. $67,000 was received, yet $78,000 was spent, Unpaid bills rose to $10,000 and there was $1800 cash on hand. The deficit was $8300.00.

It gets worse as you dig into the report. The report is obviously inaccurate and requires an amendment.

Among the unpaid bills at the beginning of the year was $3000 to Turkey Productions, LLC for of all things, fundraising consulting. According the Schedule E, Debt and Obligations Owed By Committee, the county committee incurred another $5000 in debt with Turnkey, no payments were made, and they are owed $8000.00 as of March 31,2007. Yet a look at Schedule C, Operating Expenditures, Turnkey Productions was paid $3300 on January 27 and $3,800 on February 26 via electronic funds transfer. I guess Turnkey was nervous about accepting Adam's check.

Does this mean that the committee incurred $12,100 with Turnkey during the quarter and only paid $7100? If so, it should have been reported that way on Schedule E. Or, is Schedule C accurate and Turnkey was paid $7100 for the work they performed? If that is the case, where did the missing $5000 go?

Looking through the list of contributors (Schedule A-Itemized Receipts) raises all kinds of questions. Was Adam's birthday party a flop? There are people I know were there who's names are not on the list. Where did that money go? Does Adam have a PAC where he's stashing that money? $2000 from "Friends of Andrew Lucas"? Why did Andrew have $2000 left over from last year's campaign? Who controls the Monmouth GOP PAC? Where did the $1400 they contributed come from and how much do they have now? That will require some digging on the ELEC site.

Lots of questions remain, but one thing is clear. The Puharic administration is far from transparent. The embarrassment deepens.