Former Romney Campaign Treasurer talks campaign finance laws, treasury, and keeping yourself out of trouble
For the first installment of the Political Trade Secrets podcast, we’re excited to be joined by Bradley Crate, founder of Red Curve Solutions.
Brad served as the CFO on Romney 2012 presidential campaign and the deputy CFO on the 2008 campaign. Before that, he was in the Romney Administration where he served as a fiscal policy analyst and as the Director of Capital Planning and Policy. Prior to working in politics, Brad’s background was on Wall Street working for companies like Prudential Securities and JP Morgan. In 2008, he founded Red Curve Solutions merging both his finance and political backgrounds.
In this episode, we tackle compliance and treasury. We decided to make this the focus of the first episode since these issues are critical to a well run campaign and if not handled correctly, it can get you into hot water. Setting up your compliance and treasury is also one of the first tasks your campaign will have to deal with.
Also in relation to this topic, Sean Bartley wrote the post “So, You Want to Run for Office: Setting up a Committee.” As the song goes, “start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” Setting up your committee – and doing it correctly – is one of your first tasks when launching a campaign and it also happens to be part of your compliance and treasury operations.
SHOW NOTES:
Check out Red Curve Solutions: http://www.redcurve.com/
Bradley Crate’s Bio: http://www.redcurve.com/our_team/1-bradley_crate
Quick Points on Bradley’s background:
- Chief Financial Officer, Romney for President 2012
- Founded Red Curve Solutions in 2008
- Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Romney for President 2008
- Fiscal policy analyst and director of capital planning and policy, Romney Administration, Massachusetts
- Former Investment Banker
- Former Trader, Prudential Securities and then JP Morgan
In this episode, we discuss:
- How Bradley made the jump from Wall Street to political campaigns
- What politics and campaigns can learn from the financial sector
- What compliance and treasury actually means
- The services and products Red Curve provides
- Why we file reports and what they say about campaigns
- How you can report enough without reporting so much that your opposition learns about your entire operation
- How to go about hiring a compliance company or treasurer
- Why recruiting a volunteer like your personal accountant might be a bad idea
- Treasury lessons learned from a Billion dollar campaign
- Why good compliance and treasury management is so important
- How good candidates go bad on treasury and compliance
- The cautionary tale of Congressman Frank Guinta of New Hampshire
- Read the details of the Guinta story here
- Compliance Best Practices, including:
- Importance of maintaining your donors in an internal donor database
- How not to get in trouble when money gets tight at the end of a campaign
- Setting up donation pages
- The campaign doesn’t end on Election Day
- How much campaigns can expect to pay
- Options for Democrats. Red Curve Solutions is a Republican ONLY firm.Brad recommended another Massachusetts based firm for Democrats looking for compliance products: NGP Van
- What makes Red Curve Solutions different and unique compared to other compliance and treasury services
As a bonus, we find out Brad’s favorite Italian restaurant in Boston’s famous Northend, which was once home to the Romney presidential campaign. He recommends Bricco. Check it out next time you’re in Boston:http://www.bricco.com.
Enjoy!