Sully District Republican candidate Brian Schoeneman continues to rely on Union connections in funding his effort in a Republican nomination fight according to campaign finance data filed today.[read_more]
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. Luke 16:13.*
In the Sully district race we have a candidate asking to serve two masters: Brian Schoeneman is asking for your vote in the Sully District Firehouse Primary On April 25 because he wants to be the Republican nominee for Supervisor. Mr. Schoeneman has a day job lobbying for the Seafarers International Union. If selected as a Supervisor he will be serving two masters, and something will eventually have to give.
2011 funding
Mr. Schoeneman originally ran for the House of Delegates in 2011. What many of our readers may not know is that when a candidate prepares for a run they line up donors and use this seed money to gain credibility and build a broader donation base. This early money is extremely important. In 2011, for the first reporting period, Mr. Schoeneman brought in $26,391 in contributions between 4/1/2011 and 6/30/2011. This amount includes $4,458 in small dollar unitemized contributions that could have come from anyone anywhere, and $2,965 in in-kind contributions that could easily be overstated (ask me about Sarvis’ 2014 in-kind contributions some time if you want to hear about an extreme case). Of the remaining verifiable $18,968, $10,150 came from clearly identifiable unions, union officials or union lobbyists.
In other words his 2011 verifiable seed money came over 50% from unions.
2015 funding
On April 2, 2015 Mr. Schoeneman released what appeared to be good fundraising numbers. Â We have now been waiting for the April 15 filing deadline to see those details.
Things look roughly the same as in 2011.
Of a total $26,871.26 reported as raised, $5146.76 is in the form of in kind donations, almost all of which is in the form of free website development. $8198.50 is from unitemized individual donors under $100. Just as with 2011, I remove these two figures from the total and we have $13,526 in itemized contributions. Of this, $6,400 is from identifiable union money. This constitutes 47% union money. Other contributions of note include $1,250 from federal lobbyists with little or no ties to the district, $500 is from former Lieutenant Governor candidate Jeannemarie Davis, and $2,000 is from a developer that is a regular Republican donor.
Before Mr. Schoeneman’s well wishers comment: The $6,400 figure includes a $500.00 donation from Sarah Chamberlain of the Republican Mainstreet Partnership. As I pointed out in March, Union money flows through this organization like water.
The big difference between 2011 and 2015? Mr. Schoeneman is seeking a Republican nomination in a firehouse primary against two individuals without such glaringly non-Republican ties.
Serving two masters
Photo per the Patch.com
Being a member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is considered a part time position. Nonetheless, the Board voted itself a pay increase from $75,000 to $95,000 on March 3, 2015. Mr. Schoeneman, in a stroke of genius, immediately committed to donating that extra $20,000 to charity if elected. Still, this pales in comparison to his day job. As a lobbyist for the Seafarers International Union he was paid at least $100,000** in 2014 (Publicly available data regarding spending on lobbyists as filed with the U.S. Senate).
If he is being paid $75,000 from the Supervisor position and $330,000 from his lobbyist position, and his supervisor position involves substantial constituent demands, but his lobbyist position is so undemanding as to allow him to blog regularly or door knock on regular weekdays, which of these masters is he likely to serve if they are opposed?
The unions or the voters of the Sully District?
But Unions don’t have anything to do with local government in Virginia, right?
Mr. Schoeneman is correct that he is unable to negatively affect Virginia’s right to work status at the local level. It does not end there though. Union lobbying has played a big role in two major areas in Fairfax County in the past five years. First is the issue of basic budgeting. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors’ primary role is in prioritizing the spending of taxpayer dollars. Unions have come out in opposition of modest budget cuts and refusal to grant cost of living increases for county employees. This will be a regular battle. The other issue is with large scale capital improvements. Large scale capital improvements, such as the expansion of METRO implicate the possibility of Project Labor Agreements [PLA’s]. PLA’s mandate the use of union labor. When imposed on a project there is a two-fold problem. A. The cost of the project is almost universally higher than if there is no PLA, a burden that will fall to County taxpayers, and B. As Virginia is a right to work state a PLA almost necessitates the use of contractors from outside Virginia when there are contractors (local to Fairfax County) ready willing and able to provide the services if there is no PLA. In recent history, the Republican Supervisors have universally opposed PLA’s for these very good reasons.
When Mr. Schoeneman, who receives essentially 50% of his campaign seed money from unions and over 50% of his income from unions, faces budget priorities and the latest attempt to impose a PLA on major capital improvements will he stand for Republican values and the taxpayers of Sully, or the Unions?
There are two candidates for Sully District Supervisor for whom you do not have to ask these questions. Vote for John Guevara or John Litzenberger on April 25.
UPDATE:  **I accept Brian at his word that there are multiple lobbyists for SIU paid from the $330,000. Had it been obvious that this was the case I would not have published the earnings amount as I do believe he is entitled to some privacy on this issue, unless the information was already out there. Because I believe in this privacy I will presume his compensation to be a mere $100,000.00 which he is free to refute.  I will explain this further in a soon to be published post.
  *To be clear, this statement was about dividing one’s loyalty between God and money. The wisdom contained therein can be applied to any situation in which a person has loyalties that may put him at odds with a master in order to serve another master.
36 comments
This whole thing is comical. Dollar for dollar Schoeneman lights up Guevara and Litzenberger. By any definition he has succeeded in raising more money. And like clockwork The Bull Elephant discounts that success and tries to peg it on Brian’s association with a maritime union.
“Lights up?” really? How do you figure? Take away Brian’s in kind donations and Guevara nearly tied him. And Brian needs to outspend Guevara and Litzenberger 3-1 to make up for the fact that he just moved into the district to run and has no base.Clearly that won’t happen.
Read More: https://www.facebook.com/groups/VirginiaBeachRepublicans/1106687342678574/?comment_id=1106833872663921¬if_t=like
Brian W. Schoeneman just said, on the Virginia Beach Republicans facebook page:
“I
took one check from a union – my employer. It was $5k, and that was
less than 1/4 of what I raised. He’s included money from friends I work
with and my boss as union money. I don’t make $330k a year – I wish I
did. He’s using the entire total that my
guys spend on lobbying, which includes all our staff, three lobbyists
and our expenses and assuming that’s my salary. The PLA stuff doesn’t
make any sense to me because I can’t recall ever taking a public
position on PLAs and the Board has nothing to do with PLAs. I’m not
aware of any PLAs in Fairfax – that’s something MWAA did, not us. My
guys are maritime. They’re supporting me because they’re my friends, not
because they expect anything. That’s just ridiculous.”
From the same Facebook page
Max Shapiro Seriously? It’s not like he’s representing the auto unions, its basically the merchant marines. You know, the people that have their own US service academy that requires a nomination from a member of Congress to attend and serve as an auxilary of the US Navy in wartime. So basically if you attack Brian for his union job you are attacking the US Military and the backbone of our ability to sell to foreign markets.
The union is AFL-CIO affiliated. With Mr Schoeneman serving as the Chief Lobbyist, he is basically Richard Trumka’ s Political Buttboy. Did you know that the Seafarers backed Barack Obama? I’d be interested in knowing how one squares those circles.
Do you know how many unions have AFL-CIO association? That’s like saying a business has a Chamber of Commerce association.
Sorry but I don’t see the transgression or angst here and I believe your beef may be with the Supreme Court and its recent Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling allowing unions to use their general treasuries to pay for independent expenditures for the first time including the funding of individual political candidates or the establishment of so called super PACs. What may be truly unusual in this case is that this particular union is supporting a Republican candidate and not the typical Democratic. I’m not saying I like the court’s interpretation (in fact I find it flawed) but Mr. Schoeneman is acting well within the current rules as laid out by the court ruling and the fact that others may not have access to these funds was not taken under consideration. As far as Luke 16:13.* is concerned I pretty sure organizational campaign and PAC funding was not a consideration when these verses were uttered.
No angst about how campaign fundraising works is being expressed at all. Just drawing conclusions from donation sources and identifying the problem when someone running in a Republican nomination fight is overwhelmingly compensated by, and substantially funded by Democratic special interest groups.
Your disclaimer is noted, and Jesus likely cares not about the Sully District Supervisors race.
Today’s Democratic Union focused “special interest group” may very well be tomorrow’s Republican Union “special interest group” whomever may support the given Union agenda of the moment, (although I fail to see what the agenda may be here). Sounds like the current state of modern politics to me. My problem lies more in the general area of special interest groups period, not the candidate beauty contest or any implied special interest group’s cross party funding a candidate as I assume you are proposing might be the case. So I may have missed the point you were presenting.
This is not a Federal race. This a local race in Virginia. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is not relevant. Unions have been able to donate to Virginia races since the beginning.
The issue here is usage of funds directly from union general treasuries to pay for independent expenditures like candidate donations without creating a PAC that was not allowed prior to the ruling which stated that this banned political speech violated the First Amendment. I was not aware this was allowable at the state level, including Virginia. Are we talking about the same thing? Unions could always do this prior to the ruling via establishment of political action groups at either the state or federal level.
In Virginia, you can do almost anything.
Jennifer Chronis, our nominee for Supervisor in Dranesville, has raised $59,273 since February 11th. Brian’s numbers pale in comparison especially considering his sources of funds. It’s funny to see Brian bragging about his numbers when a large portion of his numbers were from unions and inflating in-kind contributions.
I see $47,000 in itemized donations. Not a dime of union money to be found.
Unusual note: she did receive $500 from Diane, one of the DC 101 morning hosts.
You identify $5,900 as “union money”. Let’s assume that’s correct.
Brian raised $21,724.50 in non in-kind donations.
That works out to 27.15% of “union money”, not “essentially 50%”.
I understand the desire to generate new and relevant content, but between your blatant cherry-picking (“seed money” ≠a thing), naked speculation, and fuzzy math, you really end up not making much of a point at all beyond “Brian works for a union”, something most people already knew and Brian has never tried to hide.
$4,500 for a website?? No one EVER spends that on a website. Some interesting inflated numbers in there.
Really? You truly believe that no one in the history of campaigns has ever spent $4,500 or more for a website?
Ken Cuccinelli paid $59,000 to Nation Builder for his.
He was robbed.
And worth every penny, certainly paid off for him in votes.
Every couple of years the GOP’s/RPV’s spend the night in the Pumpkin Patch waiting for the Powerbroking Database Consultants’ Great Pumpkin.
The efforts to centralize and mitigate local politicos never ends well for all but a few.
No, I do not believe that anyone running for Supervisor has ever spent $4,500 on a website. Either he was robbed or his buddies on BD are helping him inflate his contributions.
It’s not the 1970s anymore Jeanine. $4,500 is not a lot of money.
It is at least 4 times what everyone else pays for a website! That’s my point, not that $4,500 is a lot of money. There are purses and shoes that cost more than that, but it’s a lot for a website.
If you’ve spent over $1000 for TBE, you’ve paid for your valuable lesson.
Spoken as the GOPe tend to do — $4500 is a lot of money, especially for a template web site. Somebody _should_ make some money off Brian and get in line for more when he joins the big leagues.
Jeanine, is it me, but somehow doesn’t Brian Schoeneman bear a remarkable physical resemblance to a young Jimmy Hoffa?
Say it ain’t so?
In all fairness, $4500 is not excessive for a quality campaign website, particularly if the service provider is performing ongoing maintenance, or if they’re taking a more active role in the preparation of graphical or textual content for the website.
Granted, it would be unwise to expend $4500 cash given Brian’s balance and the scope of this race, however if he has a supporter willing to in-kind a better website than he needs, then why would he turn that down?
It’s also smart business for service providers to compete for general election digital marketing budgets by building relationships and cultivating confidence through the in-kind donation of a better website than needed during the primary, when digital guys tend to have more free time and candidates have less money to spend.
It’s a word press template. However, I can see how interacting with Team Brian would incur a certain ‘personality’ adjustment fee.
A loss leader would make sense too, or maybe a supporter spent a lot of time and effort and the $4500 ‘guestimate’ makes them feel better — whatever.
It’s Brian’s money, if he thinks his website is a $4500 value, then God help the taxpayers of Sully.
It’s good to get Brian’s POV on the matter. Thanks Stephen!
Brian W. Schoeneman
“I
took one check from a union – my employer. It was $5k, and that was
less than 1/4 of what I raised. He’s included money from friends I work
with and my boss as union money. I don’t make $330k a year – I wish I
did. He’s using the entire total that my
guys spend on lobbying, which includes all our staff, three lobbyists
and our expenses and assuming that’s my salary. The PLA stuff doesn’t
make any sense to me because I can’t recall ever taking a public
position on PLAs and the Board has nothing to do with PLAs. I’m not
aware of any PLAs in Fairfax – that’s something MWAA did, not us. My
guys are maritime. They’re supporting me because they’re my friends, not
because they expect anything. That’s just ridiculous.
I identified $6,400 in union contributions, and yes you can assume I’m correct, or simply go look at the donors themselves. I do not count, for or against, the money raised from donors under $100 as their sources can not be accounted for. They could be all from individual citizens of Sully or all from union members to which he sent a canned fundraising email – we do not know. Until we have specific details on those donations I neither count them for nor against him.
$500 from Sarah Chamberlain doesn’t count as “union money” unless Ms. Chamberlain is a union person.
You can discount whatever numbers you want, but it makes your math wrong. To say that half of Brian’s money came from unions when only $5,900 of $21,000 came from unions is wrong.
The $8198.50 in smaller dollar donations could come from union sources or not. If you insist on including those funds you ask me to prove a negative. Only Mr. Schoeneman’s campaign can verify the sources of those funds.
If I follow your logic, but instead presume that all $8198.50 of small dollar donations came from union sources then 67% of his funds came from union sources. You presume the opposite. NEITHER IS LOGICAL.
I was transparent in my calculations and my reasoning. There is no fuzzy math on my part.
No, I insist on you making factual statements. Brian raised $21K in non in-kind donations. You simply cannot state that the $5,000 that came from a union and the few hundred that came from people who have some tie (no matter how tangential) to a union is “essentially 50%” of his donations and be right about that.
The most factual thing to say is that you don’t know. But you insist on painting a narrative, and insist on cherry-picking and using non-real numbers to do so. It’s tortured logic and wrong math. As I said at the outset, it would’ve been easier just to say, “Brian works for a union”.
When an executive of a political organization 90% funded by unions gives money, I count it as union money.