Following Mahoney's Money Part II -That Dog Just Won't Hunt. - Granite Grok

Following Mahoney’s Money Part II -That Dog Just Won’t Hunt.

Under the direction of the disclosure-challenged Pat Hynes Sean Mahoney has surrounded himself with a group  of advertising and political consultants who all share a common thread.  They were all at some point (or still are) part of American’s for Job Security (AJS) and are connected to Mahoney and his Potemkin campaign.

Stephen DeMaura–from Cross Target Poll fame, is the current head of AJS.  Pat Hynes, according to at least one source, is still listed with the Virginia Secretary of State as an AJS director but regardless has been a director with the group; Hynes is of course also involved with CrossTarget, and in the employ of Mahoney to the current tune of at least $32,000.00.  Dave Carney is a former top staffer at AJS and the current CEO of Norway Hill Associates.  Norway Hill has netted over $28,000.00 from the Mahoney campaign for consulting and printing so far.  Michael Dubke, former head of AJS, runs Crossroads Media which is apparently in the same suburban Washington Office Park as AJS; Crossroads has been paid over $569,000.00 by Mahoney for advertising and consulting–mostly Radio and television I would guess.  Dubke, interestingly enough, is valued as an attack ad guy, which explains a spin off from Crossroads–Target Point Consulting which appears to focus on micro-targeting and research, probably for negative campaign  strategies.  Target point’s customers are a well kept secret, so we can hypothesize that Crossroads funnels money to them for research it uses in its ad campaigns for it’s customers, of which Mahoney is a big one.  And oh, look–Mahoney went negative.

Keep following the money–it get’s better.

Of this pack of AJS alumnus at lest three are taking money directly from Mahoney as indicated, with a few happily returning the favor.  Dave Carney at Norway Hill has donated $500.00 dollars to Sean with James McKay (the head of the NH Norway Hill office) forking over $1000.00 to Mahoney for Congress  And Pat Hynes as previously mentioned has donated $500.00 as well.  It also looks like the wife of another Hynes Communications honcho Pat Young also donated $500.00 to the effort–probably so her husband’s name would not appear in the receipt pile.

So why is that even worth mentioning? Mahoney only has 140 individual donors as of August 20th, 88 of whom actually live in New Hampshire. That’s 88 people from New Hampshire who think Mahoney is good enough to donate to unless you remove people on the payroll and obvious family–then you are down to 79, and you know there are more family members in the list with names other than Mahoney.  So where’s all this support?

Mahoney’s latest FEC report shows he took in 90% of his whopping $147,000.00 in "not from Sean" contributions by June 30th.  Most of the initial donations appear the week before the major campaign cash announcement at the end of June.  This was clearly an effort to make it look like there was some sign of early momentum.  But since July 1st he’s accumulated a pathetic $14,000 dollars in donations from people other than Sean Mahoney, according to the filing data. From August 1st to August 20th–when we are meant to believe he is building momentum evidenced by the Cross Target Poll, the "surging" Mahoney campaign took in a whopping $7,000.00,  ($2400.00 of which is from a family member.)  That’s about 230 dollars per day,(without family) which explains why he had to donate another $100,000.00 of his own money to the campaign in late August; going negative is expensive.

There is no surge, no momentum, in fact if money matters and you put the money on an arc it’s all downhill since Jun 30th–as in off a cliff.  That simply makes the polling that much more suspect.

So it just continues to look like everything about this campaign is a Potemkin village.  It’s all gamesmanship without substance.  Sean can’t win being Sean Mahoney–he’s got no support.  He can only win by tearing down his opponents, using Hynes connections, and hoping that enough people are scared away from his opposition without asking too many questions about him.

And that brings us back to AJS.  Americans’ for Job Security has been fined three times for disclosure violations twice, specifically for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection act.  AJS paid fines of $20,000.00, $3000.00 and $500.00 on three separate occasions for disclosure violations so  AJS is also willing (Like Hynes) to violate disclosure laws to get a candidate a win and simply deal with the fallout–if any–later on.

So do we have a "which came first scenario" for AJS?  Was it Hynes who brought the disclosure cheating-bug to AJS or did Hynes pick it up from them?  Not that it matters, not that they are the only ones doing it.  But this lot is all tied up with Mahoney, so Mahoney looks like a dirty-dealing, deep-pocketed, unethical, no donor desperate businessman trying to buy himself a congressional seat–not on his merits, but on his ability to leverage his wealth into political power and fear to take out his opponents.  

Mahoney may not be a "career Politician" but he plays and pays like a 20 year incumbent.

And about those phone calls made last Friday attacking –theyare also in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection act because they fail to disclose who paid for the call.  This offense is aggravated by the act of giving false information to the recipients about who was calling to implicate another campaign in the same race.  That leaves us with Bob Bestani with less than 10% of the polling data vote, and Sean Mahoney, the guy paying all the negative ad experts to help him buy a seat at the DC table.  And who has the money necessary to both pay for and then pay more to hide the tracks?  Who already has the experts at this in his office and on his speed dial?  Sean Mahoney.

They are a close collection of individuals with a common history at an organization with a record of violating the Telephone consumer Protection act, working in concert on a series of attack ads, and false ‘surges,’ on a negative campaign.  This effort is headed by the ethically challenged "do whatever it takes to win" Pat Hynes from within the Mahoney campaign–a guy with his own personal history of disclosure issues; and we are expected to believe they had nothing to do with the phone scam?

Sorry.  That dog just won’t hunt

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