As we are all aware by now, the second quarter ended recently, which means a flurry of campaign finance reports have floooded the newspapers and the blogosphere. The Missouri Political News Service has purposely failed to mention or report the results. One, as we wrote above, other publications will report the results to you. And second, it quite frankly doesn’t interest us to pore over data looking for gotchas and contributors. Money doesn’t mean a thing this early in the game- just ask the Talent campaign operatives who openly bragged in ’05 that they had no declared opponent and four million dollars in the bank!

One particular report- brought to our attention by The Source – has peaked our interest though. It is the campaign report filed by former Kansas City Mayor Kay Cronkite Waldo-Barnes. As we all know, Barnes is challenging four term incumbent Sam Graves in a race that will be interesting to watch. Cronkite Waldo-Barnes had a very impressive quarter raising $328,563. After expenses, she reported $315,571 on hand. The Source asks a few intriguing question regarding Cronkite Waldo-Barnes campaign report and expenses:

“With a Congressional District as big as Missouri’s 6th, $13,000 worth of quarterly expenses seems relatively low. In fact, the very number of recorded expenditures – ten different recipients – looks a little light in comparison to the amount of donations brought in. This begs the question, Kay, where have all of your bills gone?

Absent from the F.E.C. filing are any hint of travel expenses, phone billing, office supplies or any professional consulting help. Apparently, Barnes has so far managed to run the only phantom campaign in United States history.”

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