Sanders admits campaign paid family members (2005)

[TomCADem]

It seems that Bernie's habit of hiring family members is not a recent thing, including paying his step daughter's husband $100K to run the Sanders Institute or keeping his son Levi Sanders on staff even though Bernie's campaign manager Jeff Weaver said that Levi “really doesn’t know much, to be honest with with you.”

This is not a good look for someone who wants to challenge Donald Trump who has a well documented habit of hiring family members, including most recently relying on son-in-law Jared Kushner to handle the U.S. response to COVID-19. Perhaps Jane or Levi Sanders can serve as Bernie's Jared Kushner.

Well, as the article below shows, this is not a just a recent thing with Bernie. Even when he was a member of the House, Bernie was paying campaign dollars to his family.

ttps://www.rutlandherald.com/news/sanders-admits-campaign-paid-family-members/article_287658f4-732a-57a5-8ab1-be235bf5c33f.html

Rep. Bernard Sanders' wife Jane was paid about $30,000 from 2002 to 2004 for work on his campaigns, while his stepdaughter Carina Driscoll got about $65,000 over a five-year period ending last year, a Sanders aide said Wednesday. Jeff Weaver, chief of staff to the Vermont independent, provided those totals amid reports Tuesday that about four dozen members of Congress had hired family members to work on their campaigns or with political action committees.

The issue arose as questions were raised about the ethics of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose wife and daughter had been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 for work on his political action and campaign committees. Such payments are not illegal, but some watchdog groups say they raise questions about nepotism. "It's a form of self-dealing, and anytime you're involved with self-dealing, questions are going to be raised," said Larry Noble, head of the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based campaign finance watchdog group.

Weaver argued that both Jane O'Meara Sanders and her daughter Carina were well-qualified for the work they did. "Both Jane and Carina are widely respected for their work in politics and public service in Vermont," he said. Mrs. Sanders worked as a media buyer — the person who places campaign ads on television and radio in 2002 and 2004 and did some other consulting for the campaign in 2002. Media buyers typically earn a commission of about 15 percent of the cost of placing an ad. In 2004, Jane Sanders earned about $11,000 for about $70,000 in media buys, Weaver said.

In 2002, Sanders took commissions of about $14,500 for media buys of about $98,000, Weaver said. She earned an additional $4,800 for other consulting to the campaign. Driscoll worked in several capacities for Sanders' campaigns from 2000 through 2004, earning a total of about $65,000. She maintained mailing lists, prepared Federal Election Commission reports and performed other tasks. Her highest income for any of those years was about $20,400 in 2003, Weaver said. Jane O'Meara Sanders worked in her husband's congressional office for about six years during the 1990s, four of them as chief of staff. She did not take a salary for that work. Chiefs of staff typically earn between $120,000 and $150,000 a year.

The Bennington Banner and Brattleboro Reformer carried a story about the payments on Wednesday, Vermont Republican Party Chairman James Barnett said he smelled hypocrisy. "I think Bernie Sanders needs to be held to the same standard that the left is holding Congressman DeLay to," he said. "If it's wrong when Congressman DeLay does it then it's wrong when Congressman Sanders does it." Barnett said he could not identify any instances of Sanders criticizing DeLay over his campaign hiring family members. "I'm not sure if he has or not," Barnett said.

DeLay's ethics have been questioned more intensely on several other fronts. His troubles began last fall, when three political fund-raisers with ties to him were indicted in his home state of Texas. Then the House ethics committee admonished him, not once but three times. Since then, questions have been raised about whether he knew about the dubious sources of money behind trips he took to Britain and South Korea.

[The Magistrate]

1. People Posing As Exemplars Of Principle, Sir, Are Uniquely Vulnerable

My practice is to hold a man to the standards he declares for others. My standards may be considerably looser, but a scold or crusader cannot take advantage of that. When a man spends time denouncing others as corrupt, and while he does is padding his campaign payroll with relatives and associates, my personal view regarding 'honest graft' does not apply to his actions. It will be his ringing denunciations he must be judged by.





"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[ecstatic]

5. +1000. nt

[sheshe2]

2. I nearly spit my wine on my keyboard when I read your title.

[stopdiggin]

3. 2005 ?????

And such staggering sums! Boy that is some tepid tea.

[The Magistrate]

11. A Principled Man, Sir

Would not allow family and associates so much as a cup of coffee purchased with campaign funds.

This is what comes of posturing as a moral exemplar. People who do are properly held to the standard they apply to others, and 'Bernie' has made far too much hay out of braying that others are corrupt to be allowed even the smallest monetary peccadilloes. The amounts do not matter, and the fact that this behavior was engaged in over a period of fifteen years at least simply establishes it is 'a continuing pattern of conduct', and not a one-off which can be rectified by apology, and refraining from such acts in future.




"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[stopdiggin]

14. I suppose you are entitled to be outraged

(if in fact you truly are)
And I am entitled to say, "Pffftt ... Whatever!"

[The Magistrate]

16. You Are Certainly Entitled To A Mistaken View, Sir

My own attitudes towards 'honest graft' are quite lenient, but I charge few people with being corrupt, and find scolds and crusaders particularly offensive. Life is an organic thing, full of curves and waves and spirals. Scolds and crusaders seek to impose a crystalline form upon it, and sooner or later must commence whacking off or squeezing in the organic shapes that do not fit their mineral framework.

[stopdiggin]

17. Ha! Yes, I enjoy my "mistaken views"

and I suspect I will yours .. and your posts.
(I think a chary response to "scolds and crusaders" is the only reasonable one. When not being off-putting .. they are often quite narrow and boring!)
-- -- --

[The Magistrate]

18. Be Well, Sir, And Stay Safe

A pleasure to cross words with you.

[TexasTowelie]

4. It wasn't the first time that the issue of how Bernie organizes his campaign staff raised attention:

Link to tweet

[Crutches]

6. Jane has benefited a lot

From Sanders' political career.

[PatSeg]

8. Welcome to DU!

[PatSeg]

7. I'm not sure how I feel about this

If I was running for political office, I might hire people that I knew and trusted such as close family members and in Sanders' case, the sums aren't very large. His wife even worked as his chief of staff for years for no money at all. Nothing terribly shocking or revealing here.

[stopdiggin]

15. I think you have the right perspective on this

as one of his opponents could (and probably would) say, "a real Nothingburger."

[PatSeg]

19. Yes

I think there is plenty of valid criticism to be heard. I don't see anything illegal or inappropriate here.

[marble falls]

10. I dunno, he doesn't seem to have over-paid them, there's no sprecific law against it ...

its certainly not Trump level.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/bernie-sanders-joe-biden-enriched-their-families/607159/

It is perfectly legal to pay family members with campaign funds or put them on the payroll as long as they provide a bona fide service and their salary is fair. Dozens of members of Congress, from both sides of the aisle, have employed family members on their campaigns. Political families, and the money they distribute to their members, have existed as long as politics has. Approximately 40 of President Ulysses S. Grant’s family members and family connections benefited from his presidency. Both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower had sons working in their White House. John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Robert as attorney general, which led Congress to pass anti-nepotism laws banning close relatives of the president from working in the executive branch. Then there’s Trump.

Yet the ethics of the practice are clear: “It is unsavory for politicians to be making payments to their family members when there are other alternatives out there,” Robert Maguire, the research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan good-government group, told me.

[SidDithers]

12. "Mrs. Sanders worked as a media buyer"...

"Media buyers typically earn a commission of about 15 percent of the cost of placing an ad."


Can you just imagine how much cheddah Jane raked in for the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Bernie spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads.

Sid

[TomCADem]

21. VTDigger: Special report: Sanders campaign millions go to mystery firm

Has there been any follow-up regarding the origins and principles of Olde Towne Media, one of Sanders' top campaign vendors? As open secrets shows, they received millions from Bernie's campaign:

https://www.opensecrets.org/expends/vendor.php?year=2016&vendor=Old+Towne+Media

But, they seem to have dropped off the face of the earth, which is odd as noted in this Vermont article.

https://vtdigger.org/2016/07/15/sanders-campaign-millions-go-to-mystery-firm/

Nestled near the end of a suburban cul-de-sac in Alexandria, Virginia, is one of the most profitable media buying agencies in the 2016 primary race for the White House.

The unassuming two-story, single family home at 4507 Penwood Drive, is the registered address for Old Towne Media LLC — the media buying company that purchased more than $82 million in TV ad time for Bernie Sanders’ Democratic presidential campaign, Federal Election Commission reports through May show. Old Towne’s income from the Sanders campaign has not been disclosed, but the industry standard for ad buy commissions is 15 percent. Based on that formula, the firm could have made $12 million.

* * *
In addition to Jane Sanders’ payment for work on her husband’s congressional campaigns, her daughter from a previous marriage, Carina Driscoll, received about $65,000 for campaign work that election cycle. Much of the money came from commissions on media buys.

The media work was conducted under the umbrella of Sanders & Driscoll LLC, a Vermont consulting firm with three registered trade names: Progressive Media Strategies, Leadership Strategies and simply Jane O’Meara Sanders.

[The Magistrate]

22. That One, Sir, Always Interested Me....

"From Bernie’s perspective, dropping out of a race once you have no chance of winning is peculiar behavior that can only be explained by the work of a hidden hand. For most politicians, though, it is actually standard operating procedure. Only Sanders seems to think the normal thing to do once voters have made clear they don’t want to nominate you is to continue campaigning anyway."





"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."

[CTyankee]

13. Helpin' out runnin' the store, the family was...