Dee Margo’s Campaign Contributions

From The Lion Star Blog by Jaime Abeytia

As you no doubt know, I’ve been paying very close attention to the race between Dee Margo and State Representative Joe Moody.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that I am really going to change the mind of too many people, but I nonetheless continue to try.

From The Lion Star Blog by Jaime Abeytia

This is going to be a pretty long piece, so bear with me but the short of it is that a great deal of Margo’s campaign rhetoric is very hypocritical and I have serious questions about Margo loaning his campaign money.

Like I said, stick around this is going to take awhile.

It appears from campaign finance reports that Dee Margo has dumped in a large amount of cash in to his campaign. There is nothing new about a candidate loaning their campaign money, but I do find it interesting that he’s charging himself interest.

It looks like Margo spent about $100,000 of his own money to try to defeat Senator Eliot Shapleigh.

On September 27th, 2006 he lent his campaign $50,000 when he was running against Joe Moody the first time. He tacked on 5% interest. The Fed Rate at the time was only 4%.

Less than a month later (October 19, 2006) he lent his campaign another $50,000. This time the interest rate was 4.89%.

The January 2007 report indicated his campaign had a zero balance with $100,000 in outstanding loans.

A few months later in May of 2007 he paid himself back $10,000.

Go forward to July 2008, his campaign account is basically empty and he owes himself around $86,500.

In September 2009 Margo loaned his campaign another $39,500. I’m confused as to why considering he never fully paid himself back from the 08 campaign.

Here’s part of Margo’s hypocrisy. While he’s saying Joe Moody is a child of privilege, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, I think it’s a little ironic that he’s spending more than $100,000 on his own personal ambition in the middle of the worst recession in 75 years.

While families were struggling to pay the bills and some people were losing their homes, the fiscal conservative was dropping over $100,000 on landing a title.

Frankly with that kind of spending, I just don’t understand how he calls himself a fiscal conservative and Joe Moody a child of privilege.

The old finance issues raise several questions. First of all, it concerns me that Margo has had reporting problems and the Ethics Commission in every election he’s been in. Is it ineptitude or dishonesty? It’s not for me to say and you can make up your own mind about it, but I think it’s a fair question.

He still has unpaid loans accumulating 5% interest.

Do you know what that means?

It means that he can be paid back a substantial amount more money than he lent his campaign in the first place.

I’m not the smartest vato on the planet, but I think in business, that’s called a profit. That’s $5,000 per year by my count.

One would assume that the Dee Margo campaign would pay him back eventually. But here’s were things get a little worrisome for me. People can donate money to his campaign and he can pay himself back with that money. That could set the stage for soft money to flow from special interests, to his campaign account, and to his personal bank account.

Let’s put this in perspective. At the time that people in El Paso are losing their homes, Dee Margo is lending his campaign enough money to buy a home in this town.

That’s to say nothing of a critique Margo made of State Representative Joe Moody at a debate at Coronado High School. During that debate, Margo was critical of Moody’s donations saying that most of Moody’s campaign donations in the 2008 campaign came from out of town.

If you saw the headline in Wednesday’s paper you saw that Dee Margo has HUGE money in this race and some have started to say that Margo is trying to BUY the seat. But if you break down the numbers you will see that $145,168.80 is coming in from the Texans for Lawsuit Reform and $34,332.69 came in from the Conservative Republicans of Texas. That adds up to $179,501.49 from out of town.

That’s a majority of his contributions.

There’s that hypocrisy thing again.

I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what Margo’s going to do with the rest of his money. Seriously, there are no media buys left, so where is the money going?

Again I realize that I’m probably not going to change anyone’s mind, but I think the finance issues raise several important questions.

With such a hefty amount of money in his campaign accounts in the final days of the campaign, does he plan on spending it all before November 2nd or will he leave some money in his account to pay himself back?

Does he have plans to pay himself back in the future?

And why did he give himself such a favorable interest rate for the loans?

Which leads to my final question. Margo has anti-incumbent sentiment in his favor, he has more money that his opponent, he will spend more money that his opponent, he has anti Democratic Party sentiment in his favor, he has the energized Tea Party base in his favor, etc.

So if he loses a third time, what will he blame the loss on this time?