Something to chew on: Where Mass. pols get their campaign pizza

"Pointless trivia that has nothing to do with a candidate's qualifications or ability to serve in the office they are running for."

Needless busywork (filing all the "necessary" financial reports with election commissions) for the candidate's staff as well.

And why aren't we hearing about all the money that candidates are forced to pay the media for advertising? Surely that's a far greater waste of resources than buying food for people is.

I want to know who they were with -

Developers?
BRA employees/directors?
Union officials?

Somebody is paying some serious bucks for access - and that would be a far more interesting list. I don't care about the pizza. The Morton's etc. would be an interesting list.

Also - for IRS purposes you only get to deduct a portion of entertainment.

Why don't pols have the same restriction. We'll give you 50% of your entertainment from your kitty. You want to go whole hog at Ruth's Chris - dig into your own pocket for the balance.

Data is all in how you look at it.

If you look at the raw data (link in Deehan's story), there are plenty of local places that get plenty from our campaigning politicians.

In fact, the data you are being shown is a very small part of the total data set; the pie chart is showing frequency amongst the 11 most popular. Overall, Papa Gino's is more like 5.7% (179 out of 3144 entries of "pizza.") Actually, without knowing Deehan's methods, I'm not sure his data analysis is correct, as the majority of the entries of Papa Gino's (both entered as "Papa Ginos" and "Papa Gino's") do not include the word "pizza" in them.

A place like Pleasant Cafe, as Adam mentioned in his take on this, has 8 visits, so its not like the small local places getting ignored completely and the big chains are making all the money, but the big names have more restaurants (read: opportunities) to have greater sales if you count all of their sales as one sum.

[Note: Not trying to knock Deehan's analysis here, I certainly wouldn't have thought of doing it myself, but once you start looking at a set of self reported data, you start to realize its not a simple thing to do accurately, because, like in this case, you don't have to include the word "pizza" in your expense report if its not in the name of the restaurant.]

The author notes that the survey is unscientific, but there is a lot of money going to local pizza shops. Pat's of Lower Mills gets a lot of business, as does Comella's in West Roxbury. Moreover, there is reimbursement for "food" to campaign staff that does not mention the source. Does Lee Blasi get pizza at M.J.s/Stash's or the Pleasant?

Suffice to say, the chains get more money due to the simple fact that they are in more places. The shops on Beacon Hill get used a lot because of their proximity to the State House.

If you've got some time you want to waste, check out the OCPF's database. Search for both pizza and food, as sometimes pizza places provide food (probably pizza, but still, recorded as food.) Or, if you really want to waste time, track down facts like over $193,000 has been recorded as being spent at Dunkin Donuts, versus less than $10,000 at Starbucks.

almost all of them pay for their cars out of campaign funds. Joyce had a $700/mo lease.