Hauser Spending Triggers
Another Grant To Lemar

East Rock state representative candidate Debra Hauser’s campaign has spent enough money to trigger a second pile of campaign cash to her Democratic primary opponent, Roland Lemar.

The State Elections Enforcement Campaign (SEEC) voted Wednesday night to issue a second publicly financed grant of $6,500 to the Lemar campaign. Under the rules of the Citizens Election Program, the grant was triggered by Hauser’s campaign spending over 125 percent of the amount that Lemar has raised and received in public money.

The two candidates are vying for New Haven’s lone open state representative seat, representing the 96th General Assembly District. The district includes parts of Hamden and New Haven. State Rep. Cam Staples is stepping down from the seat at the end of this year.

Lemar, an East Rock alderman, is a participant in the state’s young Citizens Election Program (CEP), which provides state dollars to campaigns that raise certain amounts of money from a certain number of donors. He qualified for an initial grant of $25,900 by raising $5,000 from at least 150 donors.

Hauser (pictured), an East Rock psychologist, is not participating in CEP. She’s funding her campaign through donations and with money of her own. According to an SEEC filing on July 27, Hauser had donated $15,000 to her campaign committee and spent $13,546.45 of her own money on campaign expenses as of July 26.

Under CEP regulations, a participating candidate is entitled to supplementary grants beyond an initial grant if his or her opponent’s spending passes certain thresholds. Hauser passed one such threshold last week, resulting in a $6,500 grant for Lemar. On Wednesday, the SEEC voted to issue another grant of the same amount, based on Hauser’s July 27 filing. Both grants are first for state representative races in Connecticut.

Candidates may not be receiving such supplemental grants for long. A federal ruling is expected before the general election on a challenge to Connecticut’s law. Nationally, supplemental matches are believed to be doomed because of a novel new theory of free speech rights: That a wealthy self-financing candidate might hesitate to spend money on more advertising (speech) if he or she knows that will mean the opponent will get extra money.

Lemar’s campaign manager, Yale Alderman Mike Jones, said that the most recent supplemental grant was triggered only because Jones noticed mailings that were sent out by the Hauser campaign that had not been accounted for in her campaign’s filings to the SEEC. Based on those mailings, Jones submitted an application for a supplementary grant, he said.

Jones said that Hauser has violated the rules of the CEP by intentionally avoiding reporting expenses.

“She’s free to raise and spend as much as we want,” he said. ​“All we ask is that she respect the campaign finance laws.”

Jones also noted that the Hauser campaign has been spending money faster than it has been taking it in. According to the most recent filing, the Hauser campaign incurred nearly $8,000 in unpaid campaign expenses between July 22 and July 26. Most of that money was spent on consulting fees to CampaignsWon.com. As of July 26, the Hauser campaign had only $297.51 on hand.

“There is such a thing as operating with fiscal restraint,” Jones said.

Hauser declined to answer Jones’ charges directly.

“I have answered numerous and repeated question about the Clean Elections Program and my not participating in it,” she said. ​“I’m in compliance with reporting. We are filing on time. We are following all the rules. And there’s nothing more that I’m going to say about my spending. I am raising and spending what I need to run a winning campaign.”

All the talk about spending from her opponent’s campaign has become ​“silliness” that distracts from the important issues of the election, Hauser said. ​“This is what losing campaigns do.”

“The Citizens Election Program is optional,” Hauser stressed.

“My opponent continuously complains about my spending yet is applying for more and more money, and in fact my spending is benefiting his campaign,” Hauser said.

Lemar (pictured) said that although his campaign manager has been looking at the SEEC filings, he himself has been spending his time talking to voters. He said he agrees with Hauser that the amount of money that a campaign raises should not be the lead story about a campaign. That’s why the clean elections program was created, so that money wouldn’t be the main factor in a race, he said.

“I fundamentally disagree that campaign finance isn’t an important issue,” Lemar said. ​“The role of big money in this campaign is only a destructive force.”

Later, Hauser said that although she has been spending her time working on connecting with voters, she finally got a chance to look at her opponent’s campaign finance filings. She said she had found a couple of suspicious items. First, the Lemar campaign paid $225 in rent on July 21 for an office at the corner of State and Edwards Streets. ​“There’s no way on State and Edwards you can rent something for that money,” Hauser said. She said it looks to her that someone gave the Lemar campaign an illegal campaign contribution in the form of a sweet deal on the rent.

She also noted that the Lemar campaign’s filings do not indicate that it has spent very much of its money. Yet Lemar campaign workers are out on the streets and mailings have gone out, Hauser said. She said that seems suspicious.

“We don’t have to pay our campaign volunteers to knock on doors,” Lemar said. ​“We don’t need to pay consultants to design our literature. … We write our policy statements ourselves.”

Jones said the $225 in rent is a pro-rated payment for a half-month’s rent, since the campaign moved in mid-month. The full rent of $450 per month is comparable to what other tenants pay, he said.

Jones said it’s ​“awfully hypocritical” for Hauser to say that talk of campaign finances is a distraction from the issues and then to ​“go through our filings” and ​“portray our spending in a false light.”