Jason Boulette, a Wind Gap Borough Council member, and Dave Holland, a former Gracedale Administrator with a nursing background, are two of the five Democrats running for NorCo Council. Both have raised money and worked hard. But both have benefitted immensely from the largesse of a fairy godmother known as DemocracyFIRST. I have never before seen a PAC exert such influence in a county race before this cycle.
Jason Boulette (his report is here) raised a respectable $13,905 between June 10 and October 20, giving him a warchest of over $22,000. Not bad, but that pales when compared to the $57,709 in in-kind contributions he received from DemocracyFirst. This was spent on literature, paid door-to-door canvassers, rent, digital aids and mailers
It's a similar story with Dave Holland (his report is here). He raised a paltry $825 and appeared to be relying heavily on a $3,000 loan he made to himself until the fairy godmother- DemocracyFirst - showered his campaign with those in-kind donations.
DemocracyFirst promoted Holland, Boulette and Zrinski.
Boulette interestingly also received a $3,500 donation from the LV Ass'n of Realtors. It is highly unusual for that PAC to donate to a Democrat, although it also recently donated to Bethlehem Mayor Willie Reynolds. He also accepted $1,000 from outgoing Exec Lamont McClure.
6 comments:
For 2022, about 70% of DemocracyFIRST's money came from a single donor in Tulsa OK. Much of the rest of it came from donors in the San Francisco area. What pray tell would this donors hope to get out of the way elections turn out in Northampton County?
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/democracyfirst-pac/C00808998/donors/2022
In your other post you poked fun at Nadeem Qayyum for only having "one friend" yet Holland's committee only has one individual who donated as well (and the same amount); the rest to Holland being a monetary donation from a local committee and in-kind donations from a video production company and the PAC.
I was just doing a little research on that PAC as well. Perhaps Mr Boullette can explain. He’s been commenting on the other threads.
2 bad candidates
Boulette is a fraud
Sure. When you run for office, you look for support to help get your name out there to people. When I looked into Democracy First, here's what I found:
http://politicspa.com/living-former-pa-governors-make-democracyfirst-promise/126200/
They promote free and fair elections and ask for candidates to commit to free and fair elections (something I supported anyway). I saw that all the living former governors (of both parties) of Pennsylvania had taken their pledge. And when I looked at their candidate/elected official page, I saw quite a few Republicans across Pennsylvania, including state Senator Rosemary Brown from Monroe County, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick from Bucks County, and our own former Congressman Charlie Dent from the Lehigh Valley. I also saw Republican County Commissioners in Somerset, Lackawanna, Blair, Washington, Chester, Bucks, Montgomery, Dauphin, and Armstrong Counties. So I was happy to be supported by a bipartisan group that stands up for election integrity.
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