Assemblyman Herman “Denny” Farrell Jr. is an important politician in the state of New York.  He chairs the critical Ways and Means Committee in the Assembly and from 2002 to 2006 he served as the chairman of the New York State Democratic Party.  In addition, he has led the New York County Democratic Committee since 1981.  Many consider him to be the second most important democrat in the Assembly (behind only his close ally, Speaker Sheldon Silver). 

With all this experience in finance and with campaigns, you would expect him to have some degree of expertise when it came to…well…knowing what the hell he is doing.  But apparently not.  According to the New York Sun,  “Denny Farrell Jr., is trying to account for incongruities in the balance sheets of his multiple campaign committees, which show a cumulative negative balance of more than $120,000.”

Instead of the usual ONE campaign committee that most politicians run, Mr. Farrell has six committees, only one of which has a positive balance.  According to the Sun story, “Election officials say they cannot explain the puzzling balance figures….  After a New York Sun reporter contacted him about the balances, Mr. Farrell directed the treasurer of his county party to sort through boxes of paperwork, bank statements, and receipts to figure out the cause of the discrepancies.”

You do not need to be a Ways and Means committee-member to know that something is seriously wrong with these numbers.  However, given Denny “Math Whiz” Farrell’s prominence in the democratic party, I seriously doubt that most media outlets will give this story any play. 

In closing, can you imagine the outcry if a prominant Republican had screwed up this badly?