Hey, remember John MacGovern? Hopeless Republican challenger to Bernie Sanders in 2012?
Well, he hasn’t gone away. He’s still out there, desperately trying to raise money to pay off his lingering campaign debt.
And he’s failing.
So far this year, MacGovern has actually lost ground on his quest — managing to spend more than he raised between January and June, according to his campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission.
More on that in a moment. But first, his latest plea for money, as forwarded to me by someone on his e-mail list:
Battling Big-Government Liberals
The Obama Administration is perhaps the most corrupt administration in recent history — they have more scandals than any President in recent history. And the scandals are more serious than before.
As Americans we are facing an unprecedented expansion of government and an intrusion into our private lives like never before. George Orwell couldn’t have imagined what Obama has already done.
We need to hold the Washington establishment and Obama accountable.
Help me send them a message, that we oppose their intrusive big government agenda and won’t take it any more.
I am preparing to take the fight to Washington, but I still have some campaign debt I need to pay down from when I challenged Bernie Sanders. Will you help so I can continue the fight against big government establishment liberals? Every contribution counts as we get ready to wage our next battle for freedom, and liberty!
Notice that the real aim of his message is buried way down near the end: “I still have some campaign debt.” That’s right, friends, your money won’t go to the next fight against the dastardly liberals — it’ll defray the cost of last year’s losing battle.
Well, actually, it won’t even do that. It’ll merely help pay the cost of keeping the comatose “MacGovern for Senate” enterprise on life support.
The dismal numbers, according to filings with the Federal Elections Commission: MacGovern started 2013 with $35,650 in debts. (And cash on hand totaling $2,542.) From January through June, the once and (in his dreams) future candidate raised $11,324 — and in the process, managed to spend $13,454.
Yep, somehow he managed to increase his debt by more than $2,000. Not while campaigning for office; while trying to pay down his debt.
I don’t know what’s sadder: this embarrassing postscript to a hapless campaign, or the fact that some poor schnooks are falling for his sales pitch.
After the jump: a Miss Daisy cameo, and a mysterious link to a far-right Kansan.
To finish this post, a few miscellaneous notes from the fine print of MacGovern’s campaign filings.
Notable among his scant roster of contributors this year: MacGoo received $1,000 apiece from Joyce Rumsfeld (that’s right, Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld) and the Patron Saint of Lost Conservative Causes herself, Lenore Broughton!
MacGovern’s most frequent expenditure is — surprise, surprise — repaying himself for campaign-related expenses. During the first six months of this year, MacGovern’s campaign paid John MacGovern a total of $9,680.
That’s right, 83% of the money raised by “MacGovern for Senate” in 2013 has gone straight into John MacGovern’s pocket. Nice work if you can get it.
Somehow, though, the campaign still owes John MacGovern roughly $8,400, because MacGovern has continued to rack up expenses almost as fast as his campaign can reimburse him. Even though he’s not, y’know, actually campaigning any more.
John MacGovern is one of his campaign’s four major debtors. The other three include $3,663 to JC Image, a Vermont company that manufactures logo wear and campaign materials; $4,500 to Paul Dame, who ran for State Representative in 2012 and lost badly to two Democrats in his Essex Junction district; and the big kahuna, $15,000 to the Magellan Group of Hays, Kansas.
That last item is a real headscratcher. As is the Magellan Group itself, as a matter of fact.
The Magellan Group is a shadowy outfit. Google it, and you’ll get little or nothing relevant. (There are other Magellan Groups, such as a California real estate firm, but nothing much on the Kansas entity.) According to a four-year-old post on “Right Kansas,” a currently dormant conservative blog, the Magellan Group operates out of the home of Marilyn Wasinger, the aunt of Rob Wasinger. That home was listed by Rob Wasinger as his residence for voting purposes. The Magellan Group was founded in August of 2008.
Who is Rob Wasinger? Well, he used to be the top aide to then-Senator (now Governor) Sam Brownback. And during the year 2008, while he was earning salaries as Brownback’s top aide AND manager of Brownback’s spectacularly unsuccessful Presidential campaign, Wasinger also “earned” $92,000 from the Magellan Group.
But wait, there’s more.
In 2010, Rob Wasinger ran for Congress in Kansas, and lost. He is currently chief of staff for Congressman Kerry Bentivolio (R-Michigan). Bentivolio may ring a bell for those with eidetic memories for obscure Tea Partiers. He’s the reindeer farmer from the Detroit suburbs who backed into a Congressional seat when incumbent Thaddeus “Guitar Hero” McCotter bungled the routine petition process for ballot access, thus deep-sixing his candidacy just before the Republican primary.
And leaving the rightfully obscure Bentivolio as the only Republican candidate on the ballot. And since the district is solidly Republican, Bentivolio was elected in November in spite of his, ahem, colorful background:
Bentivolio, a former teacher, raises reindeer on a farm in Milford, moonlighting at events as Santa Claus with real reindeer – and he once said in a court deposition that he didn’t know who he really was: himself or Santa Claus. His brother Phillip Bentivolio gave an interview where he called him “mentally unbalanced” and predicted he’ll eventually spend time in prison.
Okay, so that’s the guy Rob Wasinger is now working for. Having, in the past, worked for far-right Christianist nutbar Sam Brownback. And having, somehow, “earned” $92,000 from the Magellan Group while also working for Brownback in two separate capacities.
Now riddle me this, Batman: Why in hell does the John MacGovern campaign owe the Magellan Group $15,000?
Of course, one might equally well ask why in hell the John MacGovern campaign exists at all.
doesn’t that just paint a picture of the world gone mad?
But back to Mr. MacGoo…he sounds more like a confidence man than a candidate…and doesn’t he look the part in that “aw shucks” photo you’ve postered?
sort of googlized scavenger hunt.
Find the apparently random Republican campaign connection-
No luck on the Wassinger/MacGovern connection (he’s Harvard not Dartmouth like MacGovern)
But just for yucks here is the Rumsfeld connection:
http://dartmouthalumnimagazine…
Garrgh! President Donald Rumsfeld.
even legal? If so, someone can just say s/he is running for office, register, make a bunch of buttons & bumper stickers & start raking in the chingy?
If he owes debt for his last campaign it would appear he really cannot start running for another until the debt is settled for that campaign. So looks like he’s really not running just asking for money. Just his day job & revenue source, not a real campaign. Really unfunny, looks like the joke is on the sorry asses who are providing him with the cash flow. I gues Broughton is always good for at leas
even legal? If so, someone can just say s/he is running for office, register, make a bunch of buttons & bumper stickers & start raking in the chingy?
If he owes debt for his last campaign it would appear he really cannot start running for another until the debt is settled for that campaign. So looks like he’s really not running just asking for money. Just his day job & revenue source, not a real campaign. Really unfunny, looks like the joke is on the sorry asses who are providing him with the cash flow. I gues Broughton is always good for at leas
…you know, putting them on the shit list for 7 years if they bounce a check or overdraw, should apply to candidates like this asshole. (and I assume he’s a well-off Republican Pig) If a candidate runs for office, especially against another candidate who’s a ‘shoe-in’, and runs up a big debt as a ‘loser’, and then wants everybody else to provide a ‘bail-out’ for said campaign debt, well, perhaps that candidate should be banned from running for office again for 7 years. or permanently. Read the front page story in the N.Y.Times today about what banks are doing to the poor. This asshole has ‘overdrawn’! But he gets a pass, and the nerve to ‘fundraise’ for bucks on some mythic future campaign. If a working person told a bank that his/her overdraft or bounced check would be paid off by ‘another check’, the bank would call the cops and yell: “FRAUD!”
It’s a SCAM. People go to jail for this stuff. Where’s our boy Bill Sorrell on this?
I’ve been doing it all wrong…
scribbles notes
When inquiring with some friends about buying a sailboat they suggested I stand in a cold shower and tear $50 bills into small pieces and watch the $$ float down the drain. They suggested it would be cheaper than buying a boat, and I’d get the same overall effect.
Running for office seems to be a similar proposition, unless you figure out how to have donors pay for losing campaigns.
and hundreds of thousands of ‘muricans are getting significant revenue from it.
Lush Rimjob took the faux outrage genre mainstream. He created a huge industry out of it – the target audience is old white men, who get older and angrier every year – if they don’t die.
The ‘faux outrage’ industry generates billions of $$ per year – hate radio, Fox, the NRA, guns and ammo for racists and paranoids and other emotionally and mentally challenged, scam charities and lobbying organizations – all of which need to pay their directors, mega-churches where ‘murican flags stand next to the cross, gold scams, t-shirts, bumper-stickers, ghost-written screed, professional name-callers like Michael “Silly Savage” Wiener and Ann Coulter… etc. & ad nauseum.
It appears that McGovern spends most of his time sniffing the back pockets and wallets of aging Dartmouth grads, hoping that as they age they get more bitter (and more senile) and more ready to support his politics of bitterness, hate, cynicism, and fuck you. Which means putting money in his wallet so he peddle more lies.
Is he a trust funder, perhaps?
McGovern’s faux outrage biz has been less successful than some, but perpetually running for office beats greeting at Walmart.