And now we know… the rest of the story

You all may remember a few weeks back when the AJC’s Political Insider reported, on the date of the run-off I believe, about a debt being carried by the Democratic Party of Georgia. A few days later, Andre posted on Peach Pundit, calling for the ouster of Jane Kidd. This led to calls of treason from other Democrats, mainly because Andre chose to use a largely Republican dominated blog to air this dirty laundry, rather than using a Democratic leaning blog… or for that matter, his own blog.

Amy Morton, on her blog Georgia Women Vote, posted a letter from Jane Kidd, that seems to clear up the issue:

Most of you probably saw an article last week in the Political Insider that referred to a $40,000 payment the DPG made to the Smithsonian for inauguration activities. This same article reported that the DPG is $140,000 in debt. Our staff is currently working on a comprehensive 2008 Annual Report that should be complete and ready for your review prior to the beginning of the session, however I wanted to take this opportunity to correct this misinformation in the Political Insider.

The financial disclosure report referenced in the article is a State report and included only state monies. It did not included Federal funds. The State report is being amended. The report was filed the day of the runoff election and inaccurately stated the party’s debt as $140,000. In fact the only debt that the party is carrying is a House Caucus loan of around $119,000. As you know, the party is legally responsible for both caucuses finances, therefore we report any debt owed by either caucus on our disclosure reports. The additional $20,000 debt reported was paid several months ago and was inaccurately left on the report. The report is currently being amended to accurately reflect that the only debt carried by the party is the House Caucus loan. In contrast, the state party had tens of thousands of dollars of debt when I became Chair in early 2007.

The $40,000 payment made by the DPG to the Smithsonian is a deposit on a location for the Georgia Inaugural Ball. The Georgia State Society, based in DC and chaired by Rep. Sanford Bishop and made up of many other Georgians, is hosting the Georgia Inaugural Ball. The Georgia State Society is just beginning to raise money for the Ball and had not yet raised the money to pay the deposit on the location at the Smithsonian. The Society asked the DPG to make the deposit to reserve the space by the deadline with the agreement that the entire amount would be restored to the party before the end of the year. We agreed in order to assure that Georgia would be positioned appropriately during this historic inauguration.

I hope that this clears up any concerns you may have had related to the Political Insider article. More than $7.5 million moved through the DPG in 2008 to help our federal and state candidates. We built and managed the largest field program in state history, employing hundreds of field organizers. We registered over 200,000 new voters and the party is ending the year without debt. We will be presenting the full DPG 2008 Annual Report to you in early January.

I look forward to continuing to build the relationship between the state party and our caucuses during the 2009 session. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to be helpful and please feel free to forward to Caucus members.

Best regards,
Jane

Now I’m more than willing to point out when I feel my party may be wrong or in need of direction
but I would hope that a member of our state committee would at least put in a courtesy call or e-mail to our state chair before trashing the party on a blog which leans Republican.

As Paul Harvey would say… “and now we know… the rest of the story.”