George Allen's Campaign Finances Show He Can't Live Up to His Own Standards

When the Republican Party isn’t trying to keep the LGBT community out of the military or preventing children of immigrants from receiving in-state tuition, they can’t stop talking about those crazy tax and spend Democrats. When it comes down to their own personal circumstances, however, it looks like a lot of Republican candidates can’t live up to the financial principles they’re trying to impose on the rest of the country.

A prime example of this hypocrisy is George Allen, who was the focus of a story published on The Hill’s website today.

Former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) raised $1.1 million in the last fundraising quarter and has just over $2 million cash on hand, according to his campaign. That is a slight increase from the $900,000 he brought in last quarter.

But it appears that Allen once again spent almost as much as he brought in — he had $1.8 million cash on hand at the end of last quarter. This would mean he netted just $200,000 for the quarter, the same as he did last quarter.

It should be noted that he’s spending all of this money while we’re still almost a year away from the general election and most of the voters are paying attention to the presidential campaign or the fight over payroll taxes (if they’re paying attention to politics at all). In other words, he’s not using the money he’s raised wisely whatsoever – which is exactly what he constantly accuses the Democrats of doing.

Now this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen George Allen unable to live up to his own principles. Despite claiming that he thinks politicians should “say what you’re for,” for instance, his campaign refused to say how he would have voted on the payroll tax extensions – a bill that’s one of the hottest topics of conversation in the political world and resulted in more money in the wallets of 4.3 million Virginians.

Of course, this isn’t something that we’re just seeing from Allen during this election cycle. During his previous term in the US Senate, after all, he didn’t seem to mind when George W. Bush turned a budget surplus into a huge deficit by adding $3 trillion to the national debt. Of course, now that Barack Obama’s in White House, Allen thinks we have to be concerned about the deficit (well, the national debt – not his own campaign’s finances).

This failure to live up to his own standards hasn’t been lost on members of the Democratic Party. In an email this afternoon, for instance, Brian Coy said "George Allen isn't any better at managing his campaign's finances than he was at managing the country's finances.” The DPVA Communications Director went on to highlight how "after helping to add $3 trillion to the national debt and turn a record surplus into a record deficit, [Allen] still doesn't seem to understand that you can't get away with spending nearly as much or more money than you take in.”

In a sign of the sense of humor that we frequently see from Coy, he issued an important call for all Virginians: "Fortunately, the only thing at stake this time around is his personal quest for re-election instead of the economic health of an entire country. That's why it's so important for Virginians to join George Allen in his efforts to run his campaign into the ground."