Your intrepid blogger took a look at the Pat Withrow for Sheriff Form 460 filings and have observed some disturbing patterns.

Withrow reports an impressive $158,657.07 Raised since 1/1/2013.

There are a couple things of interest in these reports.

1. Wire to Wire – a firm run by convicted felon N Allan Sawyer (Withrow’s Consultant) is listed as receiving payments totaling $82,142.31. There is also an in-kind donation of $60,000 even worth of “video ads” in the reports from Wire-to-Wire to the Withrow Campaign. Wire to Wire is also co-owned by San Joaquin County Supervisor Carlos Villapudua.
2. Villapudua gave Withrow Checks totaling $1,100 and Wire to Wire chipped in $400. Villapudua later got $600 paid to him under the Meeting and Appearance Category.
3. The Finance reports list a staggering $66,691.20 in small contributions, meaning that 40% of Withrow’s money has come from Donors giving less than $99.

This reeks of money-laundering.

The amount of small-dollar contributions is way out of whack. A statewide candidate might receive $50,000 in small-dollar contributions, but the likelihood of a Sheriff Candidate in a medium sized county that is economically depressed is extremely unlikely.

When you couple this with the apparent lack of advertising and activity as of the 3/17 date of the last report you have to wonder what the money was spent for.

What is N Allan Sawyer Hiding? What is Withrow Hiding? What is Villapudua Hiding?

The payments to Wire-to-Wire have no description of what the payments were for. It is highly unlikely that they were for mail. There would have to be disbursements to the post office and a mail house as well on the report. It is highly unlikely the payments were for radio or TV ads, no one had heard any as of the time of the report.

Given that Allan Sawyer and his then client Sheriff Baxter Dunn were both prosecuted and later plea bargained to a single felony for money laundering, influence peddling and the like, this pattern is all too familiar.

It is time for the Withrow campaign and Wire-to-Wire to come clean about where the money came from and what was done with it.

As a side note, State Senator Cathleen Galgiani received $250 of the suspect money as did another client of Wire-to-Wire, Rick Grewal.

What’s a little laundry amongst Team McNerney friends?