#ncga: Jason NEEDS money. (Send money.)

The Tom James Company’s top customer in the General Assembly has an urgent plea for his colleagues:

Time for Fundraising
Dear Colleagues:

As we hopefully approach the end to this long session, I hope you are encouraged and ready to hit the ground fundraising.

First, if you have not done so already, I want to encourage you to pay your caucus dues as soon as you can.

That commitment will demonstrate to our supporters your commitment to our joint efforts to better this state with the policies that we have supported and sponsored this session.

Second, as you know, some districts are certainly more competitive than others and we need to assist our colleagues in their reelection efforts as much as possible.

Yesterday, like others in our caucus, my campaign made the substantial donation of $15,000 above my dues to assist in our efforts.

I intend on contributing more and to aid and assist you in your personal campaign efforts.

If I can assist you, please feel free to call on me.

Sincerely,

Jason

One GOP source who saw this email from the House Finance chairman was not amused: 

”This pissant spent over $66,000 from his campaign account in six months on dinners, clothes, travel and all kinds of other personal stuff, and he’s now shaking us down? He could have taken that $19,000 he spent on suits and dumped it in the caucus account to help some of us get back here in 2016.  Fifteen grand over your dues requirement is pretty easy when you are a chairman of a big committee and can use that position to shake down all kinds of special interests.”

Saine’s campaign report indicates that he DID indeed dip into his campaign fund to the tune of $66,145.19 during the first half of 2015.  Those expenditures were indeed mostly for hotels, food, entertainment, and, of course, clothing.