In the 121st there’s $34,000 remaining
By Dave Mullane
In Stratford’s 121st seat incumbent Rep Joe Gresko spent no money and had over $13,000 going into election. Of all the elections that I reviewed, Gresko’s are the most responsible and he usually returns thousands in unused/unneeded cash back to the state when election season is done.
On the GOP side the local RTC usually puts up a candidate in this seat to just cash in on the free CEP money. It’s an easy big return on a small investment and the members can clean up in “expenses”. That’s not the intention of CEP but like everything there’s always a loophole to be exploited.
How campaigns spend this cash can be a good sign of how they will act with more money in Hartford if elected. Kevin Kelly complains a lot about wasted state money but in his past CEP grants he wastes lots of unneeded CEP cash that mostly benefit himself and GOP insiders. (Democrats do it too look at Gaston running in Stratford’s other state Senate seat this year).
Kelly spent over $190,000 in CEP in 2014 and 2016 going up against Prez Palmer on the DTC side those years Prez had no CEP cash. In fact, for the two campaign years Prez had $2,000 total, Kelly had over $200,000. Prez is on the RTC now, was he just a straw candidate against Kelly to enrich the GOP?
Back to this year and the 121st – RTC candidate Burnes spent over $10,000 last week and he had over $20,000 going into election. I predict Burnes will lose (Editor’s note, he did lose) even if he had the over $500,000 in CEP that Kevin Kelly has gotten since CEP started.
Follow the money:
For Gresko’s campaign filing click here: https://seec.ct.gov/…/SEEC30_Second_Weekly_Supplemental…
For Burnes campaign filing click here: https://seec.ct.gov/…/SEEC30_Second_Weekly_Supplemental…
Burnes’s $10,000 in spending last week $3,705.60 went for a mailer, $5,000 for online ads from a Texas company and $1,500 for fundraiser food to the PMDK group (Peter Massey, 16 Curtis Ave. and Daniel Kardos, 2385 Main Street, Stratford).
Greg Burnes says ” I am a very simple person. It is about telling the truth not what people want to hear. It is about being transparent.” https://www.burnes2022.com/
I couldn’t find a 2385 Main St (Editor’s note, Oar & Oak is located at 2385 Main Street, Daniel Kardos listed as chef) on the Town’s tax assessor site and the State of CT says the PMDK dissolved as a business, and it was located on Curtis Ave, Stratford. I’m sure the check got cashed. https://gis.vgsi.com/stratfordct/
