Mayoral aspirant Dan Coffey says, "Hey, I can get $2,500 from an out-of-town lawyer, too."

The Aggregate News recently summarized campaign finance disclosures.

• Incumbent Democratic Mayor Jeff Gahan raised the most money in the reporting period and possessed $276,472.87 before spending nearly $204,000 in the same time period. He currently has around $71,000 cash-on-hand.
• Challenger Mark Seabrook (R) raised $139,504.08 and spent $128,224.37 during the reporting period.
• Independent challenger Dan Coffey raised $5,100 in the reporting period and spent around $4,500.

We've explored Gahan's windfall report in detail; naturally Supreme Leader's totals dwarf Coffey's, but the Wizard of Westside hasn't lost the ability to surprise.

Witness this out-of-the-blue donation from Indianapolis from what appears to be a husband and wife legal team.

Yale AND Harvard?

Best Lawyers in America?

Toto, we're not in Birdseye any longer.

There aren't many hits in the Google search for convergences between Coffey and Pitman. However, there are a few links to Pitman, Coffey and New Albany Redevelopment Commission meetings.

Guess what happened when I clicked on them?

They're broken. In fact, all the links from 2011 - 2015 lead ... nowhere. I've informed the city clerk, and I'm sure she'll troubleshoot this in time.

Until then ... does anyone have the lowdown on this most unlikely of pairings, Coffey and Pitman? There is no chance of Coffey becoming mayor, but it's good to know who the power couples really are.

The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 11: Lawyers from afar, expressing gratitude to Jeff Gahan for their billable hours -- and the curious case of Stan Robison.

Previously: The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 10: Oh Cripe! Or, the path from Al "Indy" Oak's company PAC leads to Silver Street Park and Breakwater, and probably others.

Some people do pushups, but during the coming weeks we'll be plucking highlights from eight years of the Committee to Elect Gahan's CFA-4 campaign finance reports. Strap in, folks -- and don't forget those air(head) sickness bags.

With the exception of Stan Robison, who was selected by Jeff Gahan to serve as the secondary, non-bond-fee-harvesting half of our city attorney duo from 2012 through (circa) 2016, surprisingly few local lawyers have donated to Gahan4Life during the period 2011-2018, and most of the ones who did ceased tithing after 2011.

Well, Gahan fooled a lot of us those first few months.

INDIVIDUAL LAWYERS AND LOCAL LAW FIRMS

Lee E Buchanan 100
K. Lee Cotner 500
Faith Ingle Smith 700
Shane Gibson (city attorney/contractor) 895
William Lohmeyer/ Lohmeyer Law Office 300
Lorch Law Office 250
Robison Law Office Corp 5,250
Nicholas F. Stein 200

But as time went by, the outsiders definitely made up for it.

*OUT-OF-TOWN LAW FIRMS & THE LAWYERS WHO WORK FOR THEM

*Applegate Fifer Pulliam LLC 150
Total: $150

*Barnes & Thornburg LLP 2,800
*Jeffery M Mallamad 250
*Thomas A. Pitman 500
Total: $3,550

*Bingham Greenebaum Doll LLP 1,250
*Duane R Donton 100
*Donald J Graham 100
*Dwayne C Issacs 100
*J Richard Kiefer 250
*Hans W Steck 100
Total: $1,900

*Faegre Baker Daniels LLP 5,500
*Anthony Scott Chinn 500
*Frederick Garver 750
*David Gogol 1,000 (Washington DC consultant for Faegre Baker Daniels)
Total: $7,750

*Frost Brown Todd LLC 1,000
*Frost Brown PAC 8,000
*Nelson Dale Alexander 250
*Kevin Charles Murray 150
*Sarah S Riordan 250
*Beau Zoeller 350
Total: $10,000

*Ice Miller
*Thomas K. & Laura H. Downs 300
*Jeffrey Hokanson 250
*Andrew Miroff 500
*Thomas Mixdorf 500
Total: $1,550

*Mallor Grodner LLP
*Amy L Stewart 100
Total: $100

*Jonathon “Wienzapple” Weinzapfel 1,150
Total: $1,150

*Kelly Zullo 1,000
Total: $1,000

The tote board speaks for itself.

Townies: $8,195
Outsiders: $27,150
8-Year Total: $35,345

Returning to the confines of New Albany city limits, Robison contributed more frequently than his local colleagues (5 years) and also more than doubled their total. After Robison resigned as City Hall attorney, he was appointed by Gahan to fill a slot on the post-hostile takeover New Albany Housing Authority board, serving ever since as a pliant foot soldier under David "Captain Queeg" Duggins.

I noticed something else about Robison's donations, as dutifully reported on the mayor's CFA-4 sheet by his eldest daughter, then as now the treasurer.

It's Robison, not Robinson. No wonder Stan stopped giving.

#FireGahan2019

Rebuttals are welcome and will be published unaltered -- so don't forget spellcheck. If you have supplementary information to offer about any of this, please let us know and we'll update the page. The preceding was gleaned entirely from public records, with the addresses of "individuals" removed.

Next: The Jeff Gahan Money Machine, Part 12: Madam I'm Adam, or the way HMB's Dickey brokers power and channels his party's beak wetting.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Lawyers, guns, bond issue beak wetting and how Dean Martin anticipated the Mighty Trumpolini.

NA Confidential often refers to a wetting of beaks.

The concept first came to my attention while reading the best show biz biography ever written, Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, by Nick Tosches.

In 1992, Patrick Goldstein reviewed the book in the Los Angeles Times.

Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams

 ... Perhaps what intrigued Tosches wasn't so much Martin's meager career achievements as the mystery of superstardom itself. What kicks did Dino give 1950s-era America? What enthralled audiences about his easy-going balladry and high jinks with Lewis?

Tosches chalks it up to the emergence of "mob culture," the age of mass entertainment that Henry James foresaw as the coming "reign of mediocrity." Early 20th-Century America spawned nickelodeons, dime novels and cheap music--all prevailing influences on Martin's fans. It was the birth of pop culture, a culture where every common man could be a king, or what passes for royalty today: a celebrity.

"Mob culture" bears an obvious double meaning, but the fact is that Martin tended to keep his distance from the sort of figures his friend Frank Sinatra regularly nuzzled.

Martin's reasoning was borne of experience and his own standoffish personality. To him, these people were interested in nothing except wetting their beaks, and extracting their revenue streams from the pool he was filling.

Consequently, the idiom appears in novels by the likes of Mario Puzo, and television shows on the order of The Sopranos.

Wet My Beak (Urban Dictionary)

To muscle in on someone else's action. To take a piece of the pie.

When Johnny Sack moved to Jersey, he claimed "I'm not looking to wet my beak." But Tony Soprano knew otherwise.

Perhaps a more subtle and appropriate definition is here, as anchored to the verb "partake."

wet (one's) beak

To partake in part of the profits of another person's business, usually as a result of extortion. (Used especially in reference to organized crime, particularly "protection money" paid to the Italian Mafia.)

Trust me, you're better off just giving him what he wants whenever he comes round to wet his beak. If you don't pay up, you'll have bigger problems.

This blog holds that when it comes to a wetting of beaks, the thirsts being slaked are far more commonly attached to perfectly upstanding citizens (in appearance), who operate according to perfectly legal mechanisms instituted precisely to facilitate a wetting of beaks. It doesn't rule out extortion, but it accepts a level of built-in remuneration not always obvious to Joe Sixpack.

As a particularly relevant and oddly piquant example, consider this.

Lawyers get fat on bond 'crumbs' worth hundreds of thousands of dollars (The Augusta Chronicle)

Like angels getting wings every time a bell rings, board attorneys reap big bucks every time governments in Augusta and Columbia County issue debt.

Think of it as a bell that goes cha-ching.

Attorneys for commissions and school systems normally charge hourly rates to sit in on meetings, review contracts and handle litigation. But when their boards issue multimillion-dollar revenue and general obligation bonds, they become what's called the issuer's counsel, taking a flat fee.

Based on responses to open records requests sent to several lawyers in the area, a government attorney on a Richmond or Columbia county bond deal will make roughly a quarter of one percent, or 0.25 percent, of the bond amount. Those crumbs from the pie can translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It means that when Augusta-Richmond County issued a $160 million bond to expand the water and sewer system in 2004, city attorney and former commissioner Steve Shepard's law firm earned $400,000. When Augusta issued a $149 million water and sewer bond in 2002, his predecessor, Jim Wall, made $348,500.

When the Richmond County Board of Education, after voter approval of a special purpose local option sales tax, issued a $115 million bond in 2002 to build new schools and stadiums and buy new buses, school board attorney Pete Fletcher's firm made $325,000.

In Columbia County, when the commission issued a $28.9 million water and sewer bond last year, Doug Batchelor earned $71,290 in fees for Hull Towill Norman Barrett & Salley.

Bond fees are negotiable but are seldom negotiated, and many elected officials admittedly know little about them ...