​This is a follow-up to a post made on April 21, which focused on Oklahoma Democratic Party’s finances during the period in which Trav Robertson was executive director of that party.
 
My writeup quickly received angry criticism, and from different (but all irrelevant) tangents – one of which was that, in my comparison, I only used data from the Federal Election Commission, and not from the Ethics Commission of Oklahoma.
 
It’s true that I didn’t. That’s because data reported by a state party to any state ethics exclusively is commonly miniscule in comparison to FEC reported data. But to appease those who criticized my writeup for that basis, I hereby offer that information from Oklahoma Ethics, too. (PDF copies of all the cited data are included at the bottom of this post.)
 
The criticizers still won’t be happy, though, because that data only proves my point even further.
 
Let me back up and give a quick rundown on how all this started:

​At a forum for candidates for chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, held in Columbia a few weeks ago, candidate Trav Robertson noted his skills in fundraising as a quality that state delegates could consider when deciding who to select from the three candidates for this position. (And let me repeat what I’ve had to say in social media comments – he is the one who introduced this subject.)
 
Having no data to use to analyze that declared skill, I looked up FEC reports from the Oklahoma Democratic Party during the time Trav worked there (July 2011 through January 2015). That way, I could see not just the numbers raised during his term, but could compare them to the funds raised by the same group both before and after he was there.
 
And that’s how I determined that fundraising by ODP under Trav was notably lower than that from the other years. There were also three years ending in the red of his almost four-year term. In addition, FEC frequently – very, very frequently – submitted notices to ODP that its filings were incomplete and required additional data (for 27 of the 43 months he served, in fact).
 
I wrote up something about that here on my website. That posting was then shared – and not by me – on one particular group page on Facebook. And that’s when all the silliness started.
 
For example, some folks responded with misdirection tactics of “oh, yeah? Well, what about Susan?” in reference to one of Trav’s opponents, and instead of responding to the actual subject. (And let me again repeat – he is the one who introduced this subject.) Some resorted to strawman methods, attempting to change the focus to some minor point, and in order to keep major points out of the argument.

Now let me return to the subject at hand:
In one particular subthread, a person also argued I was wrong to use FEC data alone. Trav must have raised significant funds that were only reported to the state, she argued. Not all state party political contributions are reported to FEC, she said, and some are only reported to a state’s ethics commission.
 
I don’t completely agree with that comment, especially since the amounts reported to Ethics alone and not to FEC are typically miniscule.  And as I replied:
 
“For that scenario to be fully deflating of my argument, that would mean that Trav terrifically raised unreported income in those years, and that no one with ODP did so before or after, AND that Trav used those sources only to compensate for deficiency in federal.”
 
Still, since someone used that as argument, I researched the same data from Oklahoma’s Ethics Commission. And that data only reiterates that same original point of my argument. Those reports also show less money raised during Trav’s term, and notably more both before and after.  (See all of them in pdf below.)
 
Here it is – from Ethics’ C1-R (“contributions and expenditures”) reports, these are total annual donations to the Oklahoma Democratic Party from 2008 through 2016 (which includes the July 2011-January 2015 period in which Trav was ED of ODP). This period was chosen to correspond with that used in the original writeup. 

​Oklahoma also has a C4-R report for “last minute contributions.” During Trav’s term in Oklahoma, ODP filed four C4-Rs – three in 2012 for a total of $3,500 and one in 2014 for $5,000.
 
During his 43-month term, then, ODC averaged roughly $41,800 in annual contributions that require individual reporting to ethics.
 
In the years before and after his term (including $46,300 from six C4-R reports), however, the average is $56,500. That’s over a third more (35 percent) than the average under Trav’s term.
 
And that one-third negative difference is roughly the same as that found in the FEC data for ODP in this same period, as I pointed out in earlier post. 

​Now, not all of the comments flying around that Facebook post were silly or misdirective or strawman. For example, one pointed out that economic factors of that time period may have been a factor.
 
However, the recession peaked in 2009, and these Ethics-reported donations hit a high in 2010. Also, Oklahoma didn’t suffer from unemployment like other states did, as was even in the top 10 states with lowest unemployment rates during that time. Obviously, the economy had no actual relevance to this.
 
Another person’s point that could have some validity is Oklahoma suffered major losses in 2010’s elections. Thus, Trav could have faced a big wall when approaching donors when he went there in 2011.
 
He and I actually spoke today about this general subject, immediately following a forum in Summerville. (And this was very civil conversation, please note.) Trav said that Oklahoma was “in the red” when he got there for the job. However, none of the data from any of the sources says that.
 
He also objected that I used this data alone, and did not use (he offered as example) the financial data of any political campaign he’d run. However, I don’t find that such data would be relevant, and because it would have nothing to use in comparison.
 
And Trav also defended another point I offered in another post. In the same forum in which he specified fundraising experience, an audience member asked about a rumor going around. Would Trav eliminate the position of Executive Director, and then fill it himself as chair, taking the pay for that role? In that forum, Trav gave an “I don’t know” response. He also offered an argument that other state parties that did this somehow wound up winning elections, as if simply paying the chair would somehow trigger victories.
 
And when speaking about that today, after I offered my opinion that for a chair to do such a maneuver under his or her own term would be unethical, he simply said I, as an executive committeeman with SCDP could “vote against it” when the concept is introduced. 

ALSO SEE:

FUNDRAISING, DISBURSEMENTS, AND RESPONSIBILITY: TRAV ROBERTSON’S RECORD WITH ODP

What Trav Robertson Said Yesterday Should Cost Him Some Votes

Attention State Delegates: Vote Against 'Precinct Reorganization Reform Proposal'