Welcome to Louisiana Lefty, a podcast about politics and community in Louisiana, where we make the case that the health of the state requires a strong progressive movement fueled by the critical work of organizing on the ground. Our goal is to democratize information, demystify party politics, and empower you to join the mission because victory for Louisiana requires you. I'm your host Lynda Woolard. On this episode, I welcome back my friend and fellow political professional, Westley Bayas to preview his webinar, 'Intro to Campaign Finance Disclosure.' In an effort to continue to educate Louisiana Democrats and progressives on how to be better informed about our political system and about campaigns I invited Wesley to present his webinar live to folks who registered to attend. We've now posted the webinar to the Louisiana Lefty YouTube for anyone to watch. For this podcast, Westley and I discussed what would be in the webinar before we recorded it and then after we recorded I included some clips to give you a feel for what you'll learn if you go watch the full event. Of course, all the links are in our Episode Notes so please go check it out when you get a chance. Westley Bayas thanks for coming back on Louisiana Lefty to talk to me about this very critical issue of campaign finance reports and how people can look them up.
Always a pleasure to be on with you, Lynda. And you know, campaign finance and reporting on is one of my favorite things to do. We'll be talking a little bit just on how it started, where the campaign finance even come from in the modern times, we'll talk a little bit about where can you look to find reports. What's the terminology that you need to know as you're looking up campaign finance, and looking at reports. And also really importantly, where to look at when you find something interesting, because there's always interesting things that you'll find when you always follow the money. So we'll also talk about some resources that you can use that I've used in the past to be able to answer some lingering questions I've had when I've seen certain reports or expenditures.
Well what we're getting ready to do is host a webinar on this, which we're going to post to YouTube, so people can watch the webinar. But I'll pull some of the clips that make sense, just the audio of them, so that we can put them on a podcast and inform people as much as we can just verbally. And then maybe that'll whet their appetite to get over to YouTube and watch the whole thing. But I definitely wanted to just be able to put something out also on the audio podcast. So are there any key things that you would like folks to know about campaign finance? First of all, in Louisiana, where do you go to look up most of the campaign finance stuff? I'll obviously put a link in the Episode Notes, but like, what's the site that people need to know about to go look things up.
So the website is ethics.la.gov. When you go there, you will see the Campaign Finance tab, you click there, and then you start opening the door to a whole lot of information. But that's usually where I will go to for every state and local election in Louisiana to try to figure out who's donating to whom and who's spending on what.
And we talked a little bit before we recorded about the Louisiana Democratic Party. And the unique thing about them is that they have both a state account and a federal account. So a state account would be on this ethics website, your federal account will show up where?
it will show up on the Federal Elections Commission website, better known as FEC.gov And that's where you can go to figure out how the party spent on federal elections versus if you're interested to see how the party spent, for instance, on last year's gubernatorial race and in the past, you go to the ethics.la.gov website to start your search.
And the party has changed the name it goes by. So what I'll say is, if you can't find what you're looking for in either of these sites, there are administrators at the state party, if you call during regular working hours, and again, I'll put that phone number in the Episode Notes where you could call the state party. There's no reason.. I mean, these are public reports so there's no reason for them to want to hide them from any one. So if you're trying to find out what name they're filing under, at any point in time, because they may change it over time for various reasons, some of them, possibly not great, but most of them probably just administrative issues, cleaning up administrative issues. Just call the state party, I would always recommend calling there if you have questions that might be easy to be answered. The people there are very nice. So don't be shy about it. Just call them and ask them questions.
I will 100% affirm that the people who are here to answer questions on campaign finance and the like, whether it's at the party, whether it's at the ethics office, whether it's at the Secretary of State, honestly, are some of the friendliest people, because nobody ever calls them to ask them about these things. So when I call them and I, you know, have questions, and I kind of show that I know what I'm talking about, everybody is always ready to help because they want to be able to give you information. Because if the one thing I do know is people that like have access to data, they love giving it to people when people ask for it. So always make a call, always be willing to reach out. There is somebody that will pick up the phone and will be willing to answer your question.
I kind of build this webinar that we're getting ready to do I build it as hold them accountable. And there is that element to looking up campaign finance reports, right? There is an element of going like, well, for instance, "what did Jeff Landry do? Who did he hire? What did he spend on?" that kind of stuff. But there's another side to this of wanting to know how to look up campaign finance reports. And that is, if you're planning to do any advocacy, or campaigning yourself, being able to look up these reports is really helpful. If you like how a campaign was run, you can go look up their reports and say, Well, who worked on that campaign? And who did they use for their website? And who did they use for their advertising? And you can actually find out that kind of information. You can find out who donates to people. So that may be something that you want to look up on the one hand to be like, "I'm gonna go find out who the horrible people who donated to that candidate," you know who those people were. But on the other hand, again, you may love a candidate and want to know who supported them. And are they people I should know. So there's all kinds of wonderful data in these. It's rich data. And these campaign finance reports.
The thing I've learned doing this now 12+ years is when you follow the money, you find the trends. And to your point, you'll see who were the consultants who are the donors, who are the were the places that people will go, campaign finance actually has helped, and doing the reporting on it. And doing the research helped just greatly expand my political knowledge, because then I started to understand, "oh, this is the crew of people that a certain candidate or a certain set of candidates or certain organizations will always use." And to your point, once you start understanding where the chess pieces are being moved, what the chess pieces people like to move most often, they can like instantly, in a few months, in a couple of years, just like exponentially increase your knowledge of what's happening in a state of who the political players are in the state, how money is being received and gotten, and really just like help you to understand, in the bigger picture, how things are going from a political aspect, at least in Louisiana and across the country.
You are one of the few people that I follow on Twitter, X, whatever it's going as these days, that posts when reports are filed, because campaign reports have to be filed certain periods or filing periods before elections. And you always kind of say, "Hey, there's a big important filing period coming up. And I'm going to be looking through reports and reporting stuff." So you report out what's going on through your Twitter account. Can you let folks know what your Twitter account is so they can get in on that action?
If you want hot takes on hot news, particularly on campaign finance, just follow me on Twitter. It's @WestleyBayas, follow me on Twitter, I always have things to say. I think this year I'll probably keep most of my political conversations around campaign finance. But there's always interesting stuff that comes out. So follow me, check it out. If you have questions, hit me up, especially when I'm doing campaign finance reporting because that's when I really like to get in the weeds. So come see what we got going on. There'll be a reporting period for any sort of parish wide candidates that are going to be running or judges or anything like that. There'll be 180 days out from election day. So that puts us May. So may will be when we'll be able to see the first reports for people that are thinking about or already declared that they're going to be running for a parish wide office this upcoming fall, mostly judicial seats and things like that. So keep an eye on it. We'll talk more about it. But you know, hot news will be coming sooner rather than later.
And I think that that's just something I recommend people always pay attention to, because there's a lot again, you can learn about campaigns, as you start to understand the need for them. As long as the system is set up to need money, for a candidate to need money, the way that they really need money right now to run real campaigns. There are clues when you start reporting out, this candidate has this much, they raised this much money, they have this much on hand. And there are clues in that that people can ask about. But you can kind of figure it out just by paying attention. But if you can't quite suss it out Westley is a really good person to be like, "Hey, can you explain what I'm supposed to be taking away from this breakdown of reports?"
All the time, if you have questions, I'm willing to decode what seems to be complicated. But to Lynda's point, once you start digging into it, you start figuring it out really quickly. So check out the webinar, make sure you see what we have going on. And if you have any questions, make sure the follow me and ask them.
All right, Westley talk soon
At the end of the day, there is a very standard line I think many people hear I've heard before. And there's really kind of the underlying purpose of even why I do this work. And it comes from Mr. Mark Felt, many people knew him before he revealed himself to be the 'Deep Throat' that gave the initial hits to the Washington Post reporters on what was happening with Watergate. And he pretty simply put, follow the money, right. And it's something we've heard in so many contexts, in so many different ways, especially if you've been working in politics, but campaign finance, reporting, research, and all of it really is based upon this kind of principle, you follow the money because when you follow the money, you discover trends, and we discover trends in politics, that means things are happening, and you need to figure out exactly what those things are happening in general. As part of this training, I want to really just do like three things, I want to spend just a little bit of time talking about the evolution of campaign finance, because it's pretty much a new thing that has come in modern times. I want to talk a little bit about just basic terminology, talk a little bit about some of the deadlines and where you can find reports. At the end of the day, at the end of the day, or whenever you read an article, whether it's in the Times Picayune, whether it's in the advocate, whether it's nationwide or political, you'll hear people talk about cash on hand and loans and in kind donations, and this language that gets thrown around pretty easily in the political space. But I want to make sure we understand what that terminology means and where it goes. And then also how to read the reports and how to find additional information. Because the reports itself can tell you how much people have spent, how much people have, how many donations people have gotten. But it's once you start using the additional search tools that are available outside of an ethics, ethics or a campaign finance website, where you can really start finding the real stories. Because ultimately, if you understand how money is received and how money is spent, it tells you how a candidate not only runs the campaign, but how they are potentially are going to govern where they're going to look for or where they may grant access to. In fact, a opponent of the candidate that I have in Texas, was interviewed by the local newspaper, and it was asked and he was asked about what do you do, like, tell me about sort of how you operate at the state legislature? And he was really like, quite honest to about what about how he operates? He says people that write checks get access right? Now immediately, he also said doesn't mean that they get a yes. But he did say if you write a check, that means that you get access. So it's important to be able to understand on the early in, who are the people that are trying to at the minimum, get access, get their phone calls returned. And that also helps us to understand the political sort of values points, and sort of the political backing that a particular candidate pass and Louisiana our law got created in 1980. It's called the Campaign Finance Disclosure Act. It guides how local state wide, how local candidates parish wide candidates or candidates that are running within a parish, how they can get money. What are their particular limits. And while there's been changes over the last 40 years over what those limits have been, as well as just like the timeliness of how people need to report, this is the law that any non federal election in Louisiana must follow. But I do want to make sure that I put a little bit of a note, State Central Committee elections, parish election, parents, executive committee elections, whether they're Democratic or Republican, are not governed by the CFDA. There is nothing within the ethics guidelines to be able to view if somebody is running in the election happening right now, where they have to report any of their dollars, or how they spent any of them. And while we've seen a couple of candidates over the last, like 15 or 16 years when they've run, report these out, there's different guidelines, mostly because the parties themselves manage these elections and manage what those guidelines are. But pretty much any other non federal election in Louisiana must follow this campaign act. What throws off alarm bells, that something may not be right or wrong. I'm a handful of different things I would say. And the answer is also it depends on how we want to define right or wrong, right. For instance, if I look using jerrells report that we just looked up, right. As soon as I started seeing a bunch of donations, and they're all from PACs right over there, all from businesses, the first thing I may look up there is I want to know what committees is is Jarrell on, right? Oil and Gas donations, right. Is he is he on the Natural Resources Committee? Right? I see that he got donations from gaming companies, right? Are they on the board? Or are they on the legislature that has to deal with gambling? Right? Because remember, people, as I said, the quote from the candidate in Texas, right? People are writing checks, because they want access, they're also hoping that you're going to vote yes for them, right, particularly these larger companies. But even people like us who might gift $15, or $20, or $25, we're building up a bunch of grassroots dollars to support a candidate, because we want that candidate to make decisions that are going to benefit us and not the rich people that are going to write $5,000 checks, because they own a gas company, or oil company. But the first thing I may do if I see a lot of different donations from a certain industry, is I'm gonna go take a look at the committees in which that elected official is on now to see if people are trying to buy access, right. Or if it's a new candidate, it helps me to know here are the bases of support that they're going to be looking for here are the people that are trying to influence their future decision making. Conversely, on the expenditure side, like I said, most campaigns, you want to raise, raise, raise money, and you want to raise money early, but you want to keep as much of it as possible to the last two to three months of an election on because that's when most people are going to be paying attention. And in most cases, somewhere between 60% to 75% of what you spend, should be on direct vote or contact some version of paid media and field. The percentage goes higher towards paid media, the larger the election is, if it's something that is more local, a school board, a police juror, a city council race, a state ledge race, this is one where you'll want to invest a little bit more and feel because it would be easier to knock the number of doors that you'd need to knock. But generally I am looking for on the expenditure side, who are you spending your money? Or who are the consultants that you're trying to work with? The reason that in the conversations that we've had the last few years, you may have heard the idea of the Democratic establishment or the establishment or the political machine. That's not just because these are terms that we're making up is because you can literally dig into the reports of candidates. And you can see the consultant that works on this race and works on this race, and works on this race and works on this race. And oh, by the way, all four of these different races they worked on. They're all getting the endorsement from the same person, right? So you can start to pull together from the expenditure side, or the donations you can tell access right and who's trying to like influence on the expenditure. your site, you can see whether the types of people that a campaign are trying to bring into the fold, you can start to see if you really see the patterns and trends. Okay, this person, this larger elected official likes working with this, these four or five consultants, and they always work with these four or five consultants, and every person that that that elected official endorses somehow works with the same four or five endorsements. So then from that are four or five consultants. So then I know, okay, if somebody's working with Wesley bias all the time, right, every person that Wesley bias works with, I need to see if there's a trend here, right? Because maybe Wesley is working with this set of candidates, because he's part of a machine or B machine or C machine or whatever.
I wanted to look at the Louisiana Democratic Party.
Yes, let's do it.
So I did ask the former executive director Steven Handwerk, what accounts they have, and you can go ahead and put in while I'm saying this. So there are three accounts or three funds that they have they have a state fund, a federal fund, and a building fund, the building, they don't actually have to report for a rule they do. And they can have multiple checking accounts for each of those funds, but they have one filing for each of those funds. That's right. And just wanted to make note that the House and Senate caucuses have their own state accounts as well.
This is the house account that Lynda's talking about. So you can pull that up if you'd like, then the Senate account as well. Okay.
And then the coordinated campaigns, like you mentioned, Victory for Louisiana for John Bel, it's just a separate checking account, but it would still get filed with the state account.
So the example is for using the John Bel Edwards Victory Fund, Victory For Louisiana Fund. That was the title, the as business title for people that worked with them. But to Linda's point, all the donations that were for the coordinated campaign, when it's a some version of report right here. Right? This is the Louisiana Democratic Party State account. Right. I will also say dig into the House and Senate caucuses websites, because similarly to the party, they are also raising money to specifically help either on the House side, vulnerable House Democrats that may have competitive elections, or help candidates in seats where they're challenging Republicans, same thing in the Senate. So they raised their own amount of dollars that are usually spent on those specific efforts.
As a donor and supporter of candidates. Also, these reports are really significant for people to start to understand and look at. Because if you're donating any money at all, to somebody and you go look at their campaign finance reports, and see they're spending their money on frivolous stuff, are just not using their money wisely, that that may direct you to think better about how much money you're getting.
And usually, most people should be spending their money on paid media, on their organizing, or their general staff as a whole. Right? Um, and maybe there is some money that is left over as it relates to like, you know, mileage because I have to drive from one part of town to the other or whatever, right? Or you make donations to local organizations is perfectly okay. Somebody can raise $10 million, say, I'm never going to run for office and they can write a $10 million check to Louisiana Red Cross and that will be considered okay. Right. But to Linda's point, these reports really help politicals and donors understand how somebody is spending their money and if it's a wise investment to continue to invest in their campaign.
Thank you for listening to Louisiana Lefty. Please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you to Ben Collinsworth for producing Louisiana Lefty, Jen Pack of Black Cat Studios for our Super Lefty artwork, and Thousand $ Car for allowing us to use their swamp pop classic "Security Guard" as our Louisiana Lefty theme song.
