Taxpayers wind up paying Lamborn donor
Rep. Doug Lamborn paid $40,000 in taxpayer money for constituent services to a consultant who’s donated $2,000 to his election campaigns.
Curt Cerveny, an owner of Denver-based Politically Direct, which “is in the business of winning elections,” its Web site says, gave Lamborn $1,000 during the 2006 election cycle and $1,000 on Nov. 11 for his reelection campaign.
Politically Direct was paid to conduct electronic town hall meetings for Lamborn starting last year and continuing through this month.
House rules bar the use of taxpayer-funded congressional budgets for campaign and political expenses.
Cerveny said there was no quid pro quo, although he said he’s provided the same service to other Congress members and didn’t contribute to their campaigns. He said he planned to do so soon, however.
Lamborn’s communications director Kristen Hainen said Lamborn conducted six or seven tele-town halls this year but didn’t know how many in 2007.
Cerveny said his firm handled about eight calls for Lamborn in 2007 and 2008. Politically Direct was paid $5,049 on June 26 for “telecommunications charges,” House records of Lamborn’s expenses show.
Cerveny said he also has earned about $35,000 that hasn’t shown up on Lamborn’s disbursements statement.
Hainen said the calls are an electronic version of “franking,” a taxpayer-funded mailing privilege used by Congress to communicate with constituents about federal issues.
Lamborn has been criticized for using frank mail, on which he spent $68,068 in the first three quarters of 2007, House records show.
Hainen said the phone messages and the numbers to be called “have to go through franking (oversight) to make sure it’s factual and it adheres to the franking guidelines and that it’s a constituent contact.”
Cerveny said Politically Direct handles electronic franking for other members of Congress and said 85 percent of federal lawmakers conduct tele-town hall meetings.
Here’s how they work: Politically Direct buys registered voter lists from vendors who got them from county election officials of the 5th District’s six counties. Those records are then compared with other records to develop a phone list.
Thousands of voters are called and invited to listen to Lamborn talk about federal issues from his Washington, D.C., office. If listeners have a question, they press *3, and a screener asks for the question, which is posted on a computer screen for Lamborn to read and answer. Listeners can hang up anytime during the one-hour meetings.
Cerveny said Lamborn has reached up to 200,000 voters using tele-town hall meetings, and that the average voter listens for six to seven minutes.
He said the government’s franking office can audit calls to verify that Republican, Democrat and unaffiliated voters are contacted.
“If we were ever audited on it, we could prove it,” Cerveny said. “The last thing you want to do is get cross-wise with the federal government. A lot of Democrats have gotten calls from Lamborn,” who’s a Republican.
Cerveny said he began offering electronic franking service last year but hasn’t updated his Web site, which offers political and campaign services and says nothing about nonpolitical work. He said the firm’s original focus was elections, but it has branched out.
“That site is a poorly done site,” he said. “I probably better talk to my Webmaster and get it (franking service) up on the air.”
Cerveny said there’s no connection between his campaign contributions to Lamborn and Lamborn’s hiring him.
“When I gave Doug his first check (in 2006), I didn’t have the service to offer him,” he said. “After that, I brought this to his attention as something he could use. He was gracious to give it to a Colorado firm. To be consistent to what I had donated before, I gave him another $1,000 contribution (in November 2007).
“Was it a quid pro quo? I don’t think that’s a fair connection one way or another,” he said. “I think he still would have considered us, because we’re the only Colorado vendor that does this.”