One of our favorite sources of interesting stories is the Lakewood Watchdog (www.lakewoodwatchdog.net). In a recent post on Adam Paul’s campaign contributions, they did an analysis of the campaign finance reports filed in October of 2016.  They discovered developers give a boatload of money to their candidates after the election, when citizens aren’t paying attention. Since the donations aren’t reported until almost a year after the campaign, no one is the wiser.

           Adam Paul received $7,300 in the months following his razor thin election win.  This money is in addition to the over $100,000 he raised during the campaign.  It is also larger than the entire campaign budget for some of the city council candidates (Skimel only had a little over $4,000 and Vincent had a little over $3,000).  It’s actually almost exactly equal to the $7,312 raised by Charley Able.

          It was previously reported Adam Paul received over $11,000 from developers, nearly $8,000 from real estate interests, over $7,500 from building contractors and over $5,000 from lobbyists who often represent developers.  In this latest finance report, Paul reported receiving $1,500 from Greg Stevinson, the developer of the proposed car lots at Dino Ridge, $1,000 from Waste Management, a trash hauling company that could potentially bid for a city trash hauling contract if the city bids out parts of trash removal in this city and $500 from Comcast, the cable TV company with a city-awarded monopoly.  

            Most notable were donations from individuals from lobbyist firms who represent developers. These included principals from Seward Hauling ($1,000), Larimer Associates ($500), AB Hirschfeld ($500), Dave Cole & Associates ($250), and Husch Blackwell ($250). There were also donations from developers of senior living projects – Vivage ($500), Village at Belmar ($250), as well as unions (Pipefitters – $250) and even Rooney Valley property owners (Laramie Company).

           Although Adam Paul pulled in the lion’s share of the development money there was a little left over to reward Sharon Vincent, a City Council candidate that wasn’t expected to win. The Board of Realtors originally gave their donation to Richard Bryant in Ward 2. But when Vincent pulled an upset, they hedged their bets by giving the winner a $250 post-election check, going to show that winning is profitable.