Anne Sharp paid $4,500 for campaign video

Judging from the eight-days-before-election financial report, which finally arrived this morning at the Jasper County Courthouse in Carthage, Anne Sharp paid Storm Stanley, a Joplin public relations firm, $4,500 for a controversial video, which features Sharp with teachers at a February 20 professional development meeting in the Joplin High School gymnasium. (Thought it appears possible that the firm also was handling her website and may be helping with other aspects of her campaign. Nothing is spelled out in the campaign finance documents.)

The video, which was done during the professional development with authorization from Superintendent C. J. Huff, has brought Sharp and Huff under intense criticism for taking an hour of the teachers' time to stage events that would fit into Sharp's video, including Sharp leading the teachers in the wave.

The teachers were not told that Sharp's hired public relations firm was videoing the session for the campaign advertisement.

The money to pay for the video appears to have come from a $5,000 loan Sharp made to her campaign fund on March 9. If the loan had been for one cent more, Sharp would have been required to file it online with the Missouri Ethics Commission since any contributions or loans of more than $5,000 must be reported within 48 hours.

The $5,000 loan is one of only four sources of money for the Sharp campaign, which reported receiving $6,950 during the past four and a half weeks.

She also received $1,750 from the Joplin Progress Committee, $100 from Joplin attorney (and her campaign treasurer) Bo Lee, and $100 from lobbyist Gary Burton.

She reports spending $5,884.96 and had $1,065.04 remaining in her campaign account.

In addition to the $4,500 to Storm Stanley, Sharp also lists the following expenditures:

Davis Advertising- $1,150.65 for signs
Ozark Athletics- $118 for t-shirts
Jasper County Clerk- $25 for voter registration list
Lowe's Home Center- $184.92 for posts.

It does not appear immediately apparent which category the inserts that appeared in the Sunday Joplin Globe would fall into.
AnneSharp 2015 from Storm Stanley on Vimeo.