News that Sean Bielat took a salary during his run against Barney Frank — and more or less hid the fact — offers a terrific opportunity to pillory a pretty unappealing guy. We should all resist.
Bielat took a salary, according to him, because running for congress full-time was a financial burden on his family. This despite making over $160K until he quit to run. Does anybody doubt that this is true?
Federal law allows a candidate to take a salary. It’s a good law. It opens the field to folks who can’t support themselves without a job.
Bashing Bielat, even on the narrow grounds that he should have disclosed the salary, is just going to make it less likely that future candidates will feel comfortable taking a salary. Which will probably cause a good, not-so-rich candidate or two to forgo a run.
So, at the very least, we should offer a big ho-hum to the news. Or, better yet, encourage Bielat to keep the salary he paid himself and to pay himself the campaign debt that represents unpaid salary.
Bielat’s a juicy target for scorn. But not on this point.
It is a non-starter topic. Encourage people to run for office. It is sacrifice enough to do so. We need more contested elections for a proper expressing of sides whether we agree or disagree. Bielat’s running was a healthy thing made Barney work a little. No need to demonize the opposition let the free exchange of ideas blossom!
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p>While many candidates don’t take a salary they do expense items from their campaign accounts that most of us would consider personal expenses. Dinners with constituents and charities come to mind.
After reading the Globe piece I logged onto BMG hoping not to see some big all-caps headline bashing Bielat…success.
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p>Sure, Bielat was doing well in the private sector, but didn’t make a massvie salary, and with the cost-of-living in Brookline, plus paying off student loans (mentioned in the Globe piece), taxes, etc. it shouldn’t be surprising that he wasn’t able to completely support himself and family while running for office full-time for several months. Frankly, I’m surprised he only took $10K, sounds like he was living off savings as much as possible until he had to take some campaign salary.
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p>I’m hopeful the Bielat story, instead of inducing scorn, will help the public understand the law, why it was changed, and become more accepting of candidates taking a modest campaign salary while running for office if they need to. The law is meant to allow everyone the financial ability to run for office (as long as they can raise campaign funds, of course), not just those who are wealthy enough to run full-time without earning an outside salary.
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p>It’s too bad Bielat felt he had to wait to take the salary so it would be reported after the election – but strategically, it was probably the right call, just look at how it’s being covered now months after the fact. Let’s hope candidates of all parties can feel more comfortable taking such a salary during future campaigns without risking backlash from the media and the public.
Is there a limit to what a person can pay themselves out of campaign funds? Seems to me that the potential salary of a candidate should be disclosed way early, not after the fact. And incumbents should be prohibited from doing this, I think.
Pre-declaring is interesting. A case might be made for pre-declaring the maximum salary drawn. As for prohibiting the incumbent from drawing too, I agree with you in the sense that the candidate already has a job, but at the same time doing things that treat different candidates differently is generally troublesome.
whether, under this law, the legal concept of “misusing campaign funds” will exist anymore, so long as all usage is disclosed at some point. Can a candidate (or current office holder) dip into the old war chest at any point, for any reason, withdrawing any amount, and then later on just include that money in his “salary”? Have we opened the door to a much easier and legal way of laundering bribes? It seems almost as if Chuck Turner just got sentenced to 3 years for taking an amount that, if properly disclosed and broken up into two checks for $500, could have legally been his to use for whatever purpose he wished anyway. He could merely have called it “salary drawn from campaign funds,” and everything would have been fine. Is this mostly accurate?
You raise $350,000 illegally, spend it to win election, then get fined $50,000 by the FEC and keep your job.
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p>Or at least that’s how it seems to work to me.
But your instinct is correct. It’s a bad idea in many ways.
his campaign repeatedly ran on transparency and attacked Frank, like that Barney dance ad. All the while he hid information from his own campaign. Sorry that doesn’t cut it, “I didn’t cover it up” What?
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p>The only thing everyone knew about Bielat was that he was running against Frank, no research, just a free pass. His actions post election has left a bad taste. Now we find out that he drew on his own campaign account, most of which came from out of state resources. If not completely transparent this is the type of thing exposes a major hole in campaign finance laws.
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p>I agree that candidates drawing a salary is not a bad idea and helps in fielding candidates of all financial backgrounds, but it MUST be transparent. If you want to be credible, you need to disclose at the onset that you will need to draw from the campaign account so people know where their donations are going. Hiding it as debt and disclosing it in a manner that it is not available until after an election is troubling.
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p>For all intents and purposes Bielat just made a joke out of his campaign.
Given that everything is (or ought to be) electronic, why don’t we have monthly or even bi-weekly filings? Sure they’ll have to be back-amended at times to fill in missing information, but that problem and solution exists now.
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p>I’d like to see a maximum bi-weekly “salary” and have the candidate declare the maximum that he or she will take (at or below the total max) well in advance. Then, the bi-weekly filings will include how much in wages the candidate actually took.
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p>This makes Bilat’s only-show-it-after-Nov-2 move either impossible to to legally or worth relatively few actual dollars. Either of which is fine with me.
Yes, the issue of candidates without wealth is important. Campaigns are intense, and you can’t hold down a full-time job and mount a credible campaign for a house or senate seat, unless you are already an elected official and getting out to meet the public is part of the job description.
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p>Unless we allow, or even encourage, working and middle class candidates to take a salary, we will be plagued by a steady stream of Gabrielis and Pagliucas cluttering our ballots, crowding out talented and hard-working folks who have been successful elected local officials.
Agreement on this issue is about as complete as anything I have seen at BMG, from the overall philosophy of candidates taking salary payments from their campaign funds to the specifics of Bielat’s hypocrisy.
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p>But by the way, why won’t he call Barney Frank in person to concede. That is the most incredible post-campaign Bielat story. “An intern was rude to me when I called, so I never called back” doesn’t really pass the Congressional candidate gravitas test. Perhaps he is just very annoyed that he didn’t win.
The measure of whether a candidate gets elected is the vote total, not her opponent’s concession. The proof that a candidate won is getting seated, not a phone call.
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p>The concession call is a silly ritual. Barney and Bielat clearly can’t stand each other. Why should either be forced to endure even a 30-second chat?
that includes calling one’s opponent “my friend and opponent” while questioning their membership in the human species. The concession phone call is the fig leaf that allows us to pretend that politics is a ritual of gentlemen and ladies who just happen to disagree on a few issues, rather than a blood sport with billions at the stake.
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p>However, I would also wonder if somebody can’t endure a 30-second chat with an opponent, why are they going into a body where compromise is the name of the game?