Yesterday, Ted Mann of The Day had a blog post about Jim Amaan not filing his first quarter finance report. In an update, Ted noted that the report needed to be postmark, not necessarily received by the 13th.

Well, today, I received a copy of the report, and it is, in fact, postmarked on the 13th. Yet there are some curious things to note. First off, while Dan Malloy is reported as having raised almost $130,000, Susan Bysiewicz $97,025 and Governor Rell almost $50,000, Amann’s report is that he raised $0.

Yup. That’s right. $0. Since the law requires that checks be deposited within ten days, either Amann received no checks at all, returned all the checks, or is breaking the law.

The report shows that he spent $31,000 of the $35,000 that he started the quarter with, leaving him with just $4,000 cash on hand. It also lists $0 in expenses incurred by the campaign during the period by not paid. This line has a footnote, “See explanation – money owed CEP”. In the detail pages, they note “Surplus of Exploratory Committee – to be determined at this time”.

I’m told that this is the amount that was inappropriately transferred from his exploratory committee to his campaign committee and could be as high as $25,000. So, altogether, Amann could be about $21,000 in the hole.

So, where is he spending his money? The report lists nearly $9,000 of expenses related to his campaign announcement. The announcement, which was delayed because of issues with Amann being offered a high paying job by the General Assembly drew around 400 people. It is curious that none of the attendees apparently made any donations.

Another $8,000 was spent on headquarters which is scheduled to have an opening celebration on April 28th. This event is supposed to be a fundraiser. It will be interesting to see how much he makes there.

Around $5,000 was spent on his staff, currently Patrick Scully as communications director and Kelly Libby as field director. $900 was spent on a laptop and around $1,400 was spent on website design.

I find this interesting, since a Google Search on Jim Amann ranks my blog post about the parody of Jim Amann for Governor website as the top hit, and the parody itself, Amann 2010 next. Likewise a search on Amann 2010 returns similar results with yet another parody, James Amann Governor 2010 showing up third.

The website does have a Donate Now button, but it leads to a page that says their online donation system in being developed and will be available shortly.

The Amann campaign did in fact file its campaign report, but it isn’t much of a report and probably raises more questions than it answers. The Amann campaign has said that the race for the governor’s office is a marathon, and not a sprint. However, even for a marathon, you need to eventually get out of the blocks, and it doesn’t look like the Amann campaign has managed to do this.