The $1000 Question

In a recent debate on KUED, Mark Shurtleff suggested that, despite his many questionable contributions in the tens of thousands of dollars range, one contribution for $6,000 that I received is the most controversial of the political season.

The problem, per the Shurtleff spin machine, is that I had stated on KUER that I was imposing a $5,000 limit. I then revamped the limit to $10,000. Shurtleff's hired guns claim that is because I realized I had already accepted a $6,000 contribution and, rather than give $1,000 back, I upped my limit.

The truth, of course, is much less interesting to Shurtleff. If his fact checkers had paid any attention, they would have first realized that the $6,000 was an in-kind donation. More importantly, the donation was space in a home for our campaign headquarters. The $6,000 was our estimate of the fair market rental for the space for a period of six months. In reality, we moved out of the space after 3 months. If you do the math, the actual value of the in-kind donation is actually $3,000 not $6,000 and we moved out long before I set the $5,000 limit.

I upped the limit to $10,000 after doing some research and finding that it was in line with both federal election standards and Gov. Huntsman's self-imposed limit. It seemed that going from no limit to $10,000 would be less daunting for those entrenched politicians who find it so difficult to make do without extra large checks from corporate donors.