SC6 Investigates: Your Congressman Has Run Amok, And He May Be For Sale...

SC6 Unveils a Three Part Series on the Jim Clyburn Campaign Finances

I stole this picture from Palmetto Scoop, I have to admit. If I saw it sooner, I probably would have used it earlier. It's time for me to not focus on all the fluff that I've been writing about lately. I read the Press Release from Linda Ketner about her fundraising , so I decided to check up on our buddy Jim to see how he's been doing. Let's say Jim has been a busy beaver. A VERY BUSY BEAVER.......

For the next few days, I'm going to sound a lot like Sunny Philips. We're going to take a real hard look at the numbers... How much is coming in, where it's coming from, why, and what the donors want from Clyburn. Granted, the people running against Clyburn should be the ones doing this, but as 6th District Vice Chair, I'll get the ball rolling for them. I won't have all the answers, but I've got a ton of questions that maybe the MSM can take from here. After all, I've a day job...

We have two suceeding parts coming up:

Part 2: Which SC Businesses Suddenly Are Giving Money and Why.

Part 3: Who Is Fulbright & Jaworski, and What Do They Want.

But first, our beginning installment:

Part 1: Jim Clyburn, Not the 6th District's Candidate Financially.

If you're interested to verify the numbers, feel free to go the the FEC website, or you can go to OpenSecrets.com .. The first thing you'll notice is how much more Clyburn is raising since his promotion. Where he used to raise 500,000 to $1 Million, he has already raised $2.1 million this election cycle. Sure, he's more important now, so the numbers are going to jump some, but this is pretty startling.

More importantly than the totals is to take a close look at the numbers themselves. True to form, Jim has raised over $1.3 million from PAC's - about twice as much as he has gotten from John Q. Citizen. But what about the 6th District ??

It's pretty pathetic. Clyburn had a grand total of 54 donors come from his home district. Yep, 54. That's about 1 in every 12,000 citizens. Nine of those donors came from one company !! Combined, they gave a total of $62,250, so a paltry 3% of all his donations came from his home district. That puts his total a tick above fringe District 2 candidate George Lotz. To show even more how pathetic his home showing is, I included all donors from Charleston, Columbia, Orangeburg and Sumter - all of which are split between two or more districts, so there is a real possibility that even more of that cash crossed district lines. And what about my home town? Not a single donor. NOT ONE....

So where are the donations coming from ? The DC circuit is no surprise ($206k), but how about Miami ($38k), Chicago ($35k) and ...get ready.... New York ($36k). Who in NY is donating? Stay tuned.... Perhaps Jim would be better off moving to the First District - after all, he raised more than $81k from his buddies at Burroughs & Chapin, with whom he was tied in a business partnership with Benedict Shogaolu, the deposed head of the Myrtle Beach Transit system.

So what does this tell us? That Jim Clyburn , like most DC insiders, has become distracted from the responsibilities of his district, and has has lost the trust and confidence of the voters he represents. There are a lot of questions that need to be asked, and we intend to ask them. For those professionals who get paid to do this, maybe they'll read this, and take it from there....

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