Overstated Money

You know how it goes, you awakes want to put your best foot forward. You always want to look your best. Thats why there is always such a difference between the pics you post and the ones you're tagged in.

Same thing happens with campaign finance reports. Candidates often try to make their candidacy look stronger by trying to show that their campaign raised more money than it actually did.

Its a dumb strategy but for whatever reason people do it. You might as well be counting monopoly money.

They always do it by inflating their "in-kind contributions".

Its a common thing. And you are supposed to report in-kind contributions. But the inflated value of an in-kind contribution is how people try to balloon what they actually raised.

District 1 candidate Carlos Corral came up with the most egregious instance of this type of thing I can recall seeing.

If you look at his campaign finance report, he reports having $58,224.00 in contributions. That would make him the top fund raiser in that race. But if you look closer at his report, you'll see that $48,880.00 were "in-kind contributions". What is is more interesting is that they are in-kind services from his own video production company.

In other words, 83% of his contributions were "in-kind" contributions from his own company. I've never seen anyone exaggerate their fundraising to that degree.

So when you factor in what he ACTUALLY raised, his contributions are dwarfed by the incumbent who raised well over $45,000 in this reporting cycle.

There is much more to the District 1 financial reports, but I'll post more about that later. Trust me, its interesting.