Schor campaign has $222,153.49 to spend

Schor campaign has $188,195.14 to spend

October 25, 2021; updated 1/14/2022 to include Schor's report for 10/18/2021-11/29/2021

Lansing Mayor Andy Schor had a head start in this election with a $179,750.32 balance in his campaign finance account at the end of 2020. Challenger Kathie Dunbar had $75.86. In 2021, Schor's contributions exceeded expenditures, bringing the balance to $188,195.14 as of 11/29/2021. We don't know Dunbar's balance. Although she's gone through several campaigns over the years for her city council seat, she hasn't managed to figure out the campaign finance reporting part, as you can see from her latest report. Compare that to Schor's latest.

	Andy Schor	Kathie Dunbar
Balance at end of 2020	179,750.32	75.86
Contributions	248,354.36	44,057.01
Expenditures	239,909.54	?
Balance as of 11/29/2021	188,195.14	?

Schor's reports are not perfect, either. There were 42 expenditure items with zero amounts. For all of them, it says "Subitem:" then gives an amount and the purpose, all under Purpose. I reported this to City Clerk Barb Byrum in a September 6 email. I said

There seems to be a problem with the pre and post-primary reports for the Schor for Lansing campaign. In the expenses section, there are several items with zero amounts.

Her answer:

The way I read the report, it appears that the campaign committee wrote one check to Grassroots Midwest and rather than just call it “consulting,” the campaign was being more transparent by sub-itemizing the invoice, which is not required under Michigan Campaign Finance Act. By including the sub-itemization, the campaign indicates more precisely what the expense was. Keeping in mind, the sub-itemization is not being added to the total, multiple times.

Ingham County does not utilize a specific program for submitting Campaign Finance Reports. The state requires MERTS, although some campaigns may use a different program to prepare their reports.

What she characterizes as transparency and precision, I call garbage. I wonder if she would be as tolerant if it was someone other than Schor. Here are the expenditures:

Sorted by payee

Sorted by purpose

I was going to report how much was spent on specific vendors, but without the amounts for each item, I can't do that. Look at the items for Allied Media in the expenses sorted by payee. There are 15 of them, but for all but one, the amount is zero. There are amounts in the Purpose column, but is that where we are expected to get them?

Now for contributions. There were 689 of them since the first of the year:

Sorted by contributor

Sorted by amount

Here are the PACs/businesses/families/employee groups that contributed $2000 or more:

PAC/business/family/employee group	Amount
Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 333 PAC	11,000
IBEW PAC	10,000
Michigan Reginal Council of Carpenters PAC	10,000
Michigan Laborers Political League	10,000
The Christman Company	7,540
Miller Canfield PAC	6,000
City of Lansing employees	5,948.30
Friedland Industries Inc	4,200
Clark Construction	4,100
Fishbeck, Thompson, Carr & Hub	3,350
Board of Water & Light employees	2,800
Foster Swift Collins & Smith	2,600
Green Peak Industries	2,500
Gillespie Group	2,400
Governmental Consultant Services	2,355
Karoub Associates	2,250
Grewal Law PLLC & Church Wyble	2,100
Joel R Szirtes (HealthCall)	2,100
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Berns	2,100
Andrew Abood	2,000
Honigman Miller Schwartz & Co	2,000
Kramer Management Group	2,000

The detail from which the above was compiled is here.

As I said in my last story, Kathie Dunbar said in a recent campaign flyer that "81% of [Schor's] funding comes from outside of Lansing and from special interests who benefit from him staying in office." Figuring that out for 689 contributions would have been a lot of work. Since all this data has to be typed into a spreadsheet, I didn't collect addresses. It did catch my eye that contributions were received from the mayors of Austin, Texas; Columbia, South Carolina; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. All Democrats, as we'd expect.

Schor certainly doesn't need all this money for his mayoral campaign. So why does he collect it? Because he can? Because he can use it when goes on to seek higher office?

And why do so many people support him? It's not that he's being challenged by a Trump Republican, the only thing worse that I can think of. Maybe it's that he is the chosen one for the Democratic Party, and Democrats rule in Ingham County. I just don't understand.

Send comments, questions, and tips to stevenrharry@gmail.com or call or text me at 517-730-2638. If you'd like to be notified by email when I post a new story, let me know.

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