October 15, 2004
(Updated Oct 18, 2004)

Why did Dennis Moore give Kansas Democratic Party 
$136,500 since August 1?

Congressman Dennis Moore's 269-page FEC report from Sept 30, 2004 can be viewed online here:  http://herndon1.sdrdc.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?C00331066

The last two pages of this report are a bit curious.  Here's the summary of these two pages showing several contributions by Dennis Moore to the Kansas Democratic Party to achieve his apparent goal to "transfer excess campaign funds":

All of these figures can be seen on the FEC reports at the bottom of this page.

Why so many transfers?  Was this an attempt to hide one single large money transfer?

Is there any connection between Moore's large contributions to the Kansas Democratic Party, and the mailings the KDP recently did on his behalf? 

Three recent KDP mailings for Moore are described on these Meadowlark pages:

• Kansas Democratic Party Mails Advance Ballot Requests to JoCo Women Voters to Help Dennis Moore?
  "Paid for by the Kansas Democratic Party, www.ksdp.org.  Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee"
  
• Kansas Democratic Party Goes Over the Line Insinuating Ties to White Supremacists
  "Paid for by the Kansas Democratic Party"
  [THREE different mailings on this topic]

Is it possible that Moore is behind this hit piece on Kobach but didn't want his name on it? No where did the piece say "Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee".  Or will we be seeing ads from the KDP supporting Moore that are "independent" of Moore's campaign, but paid for by Moore's "excess campaign funds"?

The Kansas Democratic Party has a history of dirty tricks, which the press largely ignores.  Through its Kansans for Democratic Leadership PAC in 2002, the Kansas Democratic Party laundered $153,000 in the days before the November 2002 election.  The architect of this was likely the PAC treasurer, Chris Gallaway, who has "graduated" to the contact person for the Young Democrats of America 527.  While Gallaway may not be calling shots in Kansas right now, he certainly could be supplying advice on money matters.

The Kansas press didn't even find this nearly $300,000 story from 2002 until late July 2003, and some newspapers, most notably the Topeka Capital Journal, refuse to report simple facts about the largest political money transfers in 2002. 

Can we trust the Kansas City Star and the Topeka Capital Journal to investigate and report this story and ask questions about these money transfers?  If history is any predictor, only the Lawrence Journal-World will look into this.

New and improved campaign reporting laws will be fairly worthless when the press actively ignores such stories now.

K a n s a s M e a d o w l a r k @ e f g 2 . c o m