This story’s developing, more to come soon… (read Tom’s response to this story in the comment section)

And now for the rest of the story:

Hold on to your hats, this one may just blow a blood vessel.

So we all know how important it is to keep good records as a treasurer, right? Am I missing something here, in assuming that the treasurer should know where they’re spending their money?

Let’s just take a look at this little nugget. On April 12th there are two contributions from two candidate to the Douglas County Republicans (DCR). One from Polly Lawrence and the second Tom Vann. Take a look:

You’ll notice that Mrs. Lawrence, (side note, I don’t support her, but she did nothing wrong here), contributed a check to DCR from her campaign. It’s from Polly For House 44, and the contribution shows on her SOS filling. That’s the appropriate way to file these campaign expenses.

The expense was for a candidate forum, meet and greet thing that the DCR put on called, the “Friday Night Candidate” forum. There was only two candidate exclusively allowed to sponsor the event. Mrs. Lawrence and Mr. Vann. Pat Nohavec, then vice-chair of the DCR, made it a point at this event to thank the two and that Tom Vann and Polly Lawrence were generous and gracious sponsors for the event.

A couple questions before I go on. Why were no other candidates even offered this chance to sponsor the event, why were all the other candidates barred from providing their campaign literature at this event? I’m sure the Norton, Buck, Holbert(s), Ament, Gessler or others would have gladly put up a few bucks to sponsor the event. Were they given that same opportunity? Why would Mrs. Nohavec not allow other campaigns to even bring their literature in? Which two candidates has Mrs. Nohavec endorsed? (and there’s more to come on this at a later posting, for now I’m just asking the questions)

So Mr. Vann my question to you is, why is this expense not on your report? It clearly was before July 15th, so shouldn’t this political activity on your campaigns behalf be notated on your SOS report? If you had filled this properly, would this not make your report overdrawn by $3,097.52? Forgive me if my math is incorrect, I suffer from dyslexia and get confused at times.

My dyslexia aside, if you did write this check from your personal account, did Tom Vann sponsor the event or did your campaign sponsor the event? Did you as a private citizen benefit or did your campaign benefit? Did you distribute your campaign literature as an exclusive “co-sponsor” of the event?

Was this a campaign finance violation, and could someone file a complaint about this? I’m not the elections expert here I’m just asking a few questions.

Last one, if this was an honest oversight, everyone makes mistakes, why would Tom not know about this contribution/expense? Isn’t it the responsibility of the candidate to know where they’re spending their money?

Original Post below:

How is it possible for the candidate for the Douglas County Treasurer overdraw his account? Why would you want a treasurer that spends more that he brings in?

Throughout the last several months I’ve gone from forum to forum, meeting to meeting all throughout Douglas County. I’ve heard Tom speak many times and in just about every speech he touts himself a fiscal conservative, responsible and abundantly qualified.  What qualifies a man, that only has three reported supporters on his SOS filing, and one of them was himself? How do you run a political campaign when only two people in the entire county support you? Well actually only one of his supporters are from this county so he’s got one person that supports him from Douglas County.

You’ll notice Tom is almost fully self-funded, my question is, if you’re self-funded why would you not give yourself enough money to cover your deficit?

Take a look at his supporters and his contributions to his campaign.

Here’s a shot of Tom’s balance Report:

He’s overdrawn by $1597.52, Tom is not a good candidate for treasurer.

Now compare that to his opponent Diane Holbert:

I’m not sure how you read this but I see Diane Holbert, fiscally responsible, with lots of support from many people throughout the county. Then on the flip side Tom Vann is a primarily self funded stock broker that wants to play politician and chose treasurer as his entry point into politics.

More developing, I’ll provide a list of Diane’s supporters It’s a big list and I’m going to consolidate for this blog.

Here’s my rebuttal to Tom Vann’s response below:

First, not a good use of the age card, I don’t care about your age, especially with this issue. Keep to the facts.

Lies Tom? Point them out please, here on this blog. You can’t, can you? You’ve got to post them on your campaign site, where you called this blog a “minor internet publication”. That made me laugh, it’s true, it’s not a widely known blog, but you’ve taken notice. Apparently I’m big enough to force a response from you, and don’t think I don’t know about the recent email you sent out….

The reality of the situation is if you filled the financial report incorrectly for the SOS, whose fault is it? Not mine, it’s yours, I didn’t file your report so I couldn’t possibly be telling a lie. All I did was point out that you clearly overdrew your campaign account according to your finance report on the Secretary of States website. T-shirt bill or not.

You clearly have not exhibited sound leadership skills in trying to clear this issue up. You point out that I didn’t contact you for your side of the story, nope I didn’t. Here’s my reasons, you won’t talk with me. At events you won’t even acknowledge me, because you can’t separate your personal feelings about me. You show consistent anger control issues when I’m around you. I’ll point out one other tidbit, before you responded to my posting on your campaign website, did you contact me, nope you didn’t.

Back to my points, why would you not just give yourself enough money to cover the shortfall of money in your account. If you do have a positive balance in your account, that you didn’t report to the SOS, then did you lie on the report? All I’ve done here is point out the obvious, you spent more than you took in. That’s not a lie.

Another interesting point. You say on your website that you paid or at least received the bill on the 11th of July. Why then knowing that you’d overdraw your account not deposit your self-funded contributions on the 11th showing a positive balance on the SOS report? Are you capable of balancing a checkbook, do you know how to keep a positive balance? Can we really trust a politician that’s going to be in charge of $300 Million of county assets?

Who approached you to run? Was it a party official? Who are these people that asked you to run?  How many people support your campaign? Two, are there more than two?

Two more things, Why do you insist on doing this theatrical claim that you’re for the party and not the

Last one, you point out you’re not a stock broker, however you called yourself that for months on the campaign trail and have switched your title several times.