Knowns and Unknowns: The Money Trail

With election day rapidly approaching, we'd like to give you as much information as we can about who exactly is behind Athens Forward, 2024's Athens for All, and 2022's Neighbors for a Better Community. There's still a lot we don't know and many more rabbit holes to go down, but for the time being we will mostly focus on the known knowns.

In 2022, 2024, and 2026 someone named David Owens registered an independent committee with the Georgia State Ethics Commission, and through those committees, accepted contributions and made expenditures to affect the outcome of local Athens elections. In 2022, it was Neighbors for a Better Community. 2024, Athens for All. And 2026, Athens Forward.

What is an independent committee? It's not a PAC (political action committee), although a hybrid organization could contain both a PAC and an independent committee. Here's how it's defined in state law:

"Independent committee" means any committee, club, association, partnership, corporation, labor union, or other group of persons, other than a campaign committee, political party, or political action committee, which receives donations during a calendar year from persons who are members or supporters of the committee and which expends such funds either for the purpose of affecting the outcome of an election for any elected office or to advocate the election or defeat of any particular candidate. O.C.G.A. § 21-5-3(15)

PACs can donate directly to candidates or campaign committees and are subject to campaign contribution limits (in terms of their donations out to candidates, not in terms of the amount that can be donated to the PAC). Independent committees, on the other hand, cannot donate directly to candidates or campaign committees and are thus not subject to campaign contribution limits. (Thanks, Citizens United!). They are required to register with the state before accepting or spending any money and there is no minimum threshold before they're required to register or report on their activity. SB 199, a bill passed in 2025, went into effect on January 1, 2026. It changed the reporting requirements for PACs. Previously, PACs did not need to register with the state until their aggregate contributions and expenditures for the year reached $25,001. Now they must register before raising or spending any money, and maintain a separate, segregated bank account for PAC funds.

To maintain their status as independent, committees must not make any expenditures "with the cooperation, consent of, in consultation with, or at the request or suggestion of a candidate, agent, or authorized committee [Regs. 189-3-.01(9)(f)]" because that kind of coordination would move them into the PAC camp and that would trigger campaign contribution limits. We're being just a smidge pedantic in clarifying that these entities are independent committees rather than PACs because that status is what allows them to bypass campaign contribution limits and what requires candidates to disavow any connection to them. To admit otherwise would be a blatant campaign finance violation. (See here, and here.)

So, David Owens, who is he? We're not sure. There are a few David Owenses that live in Athens. We don't think any of those are him. There is a David Owens who appears to be friends with Steve Middlebrooks and who shares the same political leanings based on his public social media posts. He lives in the state but not locally. He's the most likely contender. But other than registering a committee with the State Ethics Commission every two years and filing the required disclosures on time (but often late, and seemingly with accounting errors), it's not clear to what extent Mr. Owens is involved. To our knowledge, there is no record of Mr. Owens donating to any of the candidates endorsed by Neighbors for a Better Community, Athens for All, or Athens Forward. TBD!

All three independent committee addresses are PO Boxes in Athens – 5802, 7051 and 253. One of these (7051) is associated with Alpha Gamma Rho Alumni Board via their vice president, Tyler Harper, a former state senator and current Agriculture Commissioner of Georgia since 2023. The first two independent committees share a phone number which now belongs to a church in Habersham. When reached on Tuesday, the man who answered the phone confirmed the number is in use by the church, they've had it for a couple of years, and they have no knowledge of or affiliation with anyone named David Owens or any independent committee for political donations. The number provided for Athens Forward appears to be disconnected. A Google search of that number returns a pamphlet for the Institute of Biological Engineering. There are no obvious connections between the entities. As of the time of this writing, the organization has not responded to an email seeking clarification about their phone number or possible connection to David Owens or Athens Forward.

We'll leave the mystery of David Owens there for now. If you know anything about the identity of David, email us at systemic.ills@proton.me or message Systemic_Ills.13 on Signal.

Because all of these entities are independent committees, they can't donate directly to any candidates or candidate committees, but they can "expressly advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate." There are a few different campaign disclosure documents a committee is required to file with the State Ethics Commission. With respect to the upcoming election, Athens Forward was required to file their "Two Weeks Prior CCDR" (Campaign Contribution Disclosure Report) on May 5th. Here's what they filed:

No contributions, no expenditures. There have been no amendments to this form filed as of Thursday morning, May 7th. We will continue to check the State Ethics Commission website daily for updates on Athens Forward. Many Athenians received a mailer marked as paid for by Athens Forward in the last week of April. The committee could go on to file an amended CCDR and retroactively report the contributions and expenditures that funded the Fisher/Denson mailer, although doing so may constitute a violation of some degree, given that the report filed on May 5th requires an attestation that the information contained within it is correct. From now until election day, Athens Forward must also file Two Business Day Reports to document any contributions or expenditures of $1,000.00 or more. These reports, as the name suggests, need to be filed within two business days of receipt.

For now, that is all we can confidently say about Athens Forward. We'll return to a deeper dive on their predecessors.

These committees have gotten more sophisticated since they first formed in 2022, each year filing their registration with the state closer to election day to lessen the number of disclosures they must file after registration and to narrow the window of time available for someone to uncover what they're up to. In 2022, they registered 62 days before the election; in 2024, 43 days; and in 2026, just 29 days before the election^[1].

Independent committees, much like PACs and candidate committees, are required to report the names, addresses and employment information for any donors who contribute more than $100 in aggregate in a calendar year.

Neighborhood for a Better Community, which in 2022 advocated for the elections of Dexter Fisher, John Culpepper and Asia Thomas, reported 26 total contributions; 18 individual donors and 7 corporate donors (one corporation donated two times). The largest single donor was Vanessa Akins, of the Akins Ford dealership, who gave $10,000 on May 19th, just five days before election day. The largest corporate contribution also totaled $10,000, given in two $5,000 chunks on April 2nd and May 19th by JJM Operations I, a company whose CFO and secretary, Mike Blaesing and Joseph Block respectively, are both on the board of Athens Classic, Inc., the 501c(4) led by Steve Middlebrooks. A thorough review of the other 23 individual and corporate donors is too time intensive of a task for this installment of the series, but it will be explored at a later date. A list of donors and their contribution amount can be found in this footnote^[2].

Neighborhood for a Better Community, by and large, filed their required disclosures on time and we'll give them credit for that, because things go downhill from there. We're about to get into the weeds here. You have our permission to tap out.

Editor's note: We wish we'd learned this before we did all this dang math, but David Owens gets a passing grade, for now. The State Ethics Campaign website was run by one vendor from 2005-2021. In 2022, they unveiled a new website! It. did. not. work. It was plagued with problems -- it was difficult for candidates and/or committees to input their information, and the website would then generate inaccurate reports, as it did in this case with Neighbors for a Better Community's CCDR. Leaving our math calculations because they are correct; but the responsible party for the error is the State Ethics Comission's website incorrectly auto-generating a CCDR from documents uploaded by the independent committee.

At the end of the year, independent committees are required to file a Final Report CCDR. This report captures total contributions received and expenditures made in the current reporting period -- i.e., since the last filed CCDR, which was the "14 days before election CCDR" the committee filed on May 10th, 2022^[3].

In their 14 days before election CCDR, they reported $37,000.00 in contributions and $32,277.48 in expenditures, leaving them with $4,722.52 on hand. They subsequently filed four separate Two Business Day Reports, three covering the general election from May 19th through May 23rd, and one for Dexter Fisher's run-off, filed on June 17th. In those four reports, they recorded a total of $21,000 in contributions ($16,000 for the general, $5,000 for the run-off). Those same four reports list a total expenditure of $26,436.04 ($23,110.43 in the general, $3,325.61 for the run-off). There are an additional two $500 contributions reported on the CCDR Final Report, as well as one $2,674.39 expenditure implied but not itemized (we'll get to it). That brings total contributions after the first CCDR filing to $22,000 and total expenditures to $29,110.43.

According to an Advisory Opinion from the State Ethics Commission, 2017-01, the accounting method used for campaign finance disclosures is "substantially different" from what's known as "GAAP" (generally accepted accounting principles). Rather than utilizing a calendar or fiscal year, campaign disclosures are based on "election cycles" which can sometimes span several years. The Advisory Opinion clarifies that in the event of a run-off, the election cycle ends only after the run-off is held as it is a "continuation of the general election". Neighbors for a Better Community's CCDR Final Report should have been "reset" after the conclusion of the election cycle. Here's what their final CCDR looked like:

Notice anything? Their cash on hand at the end of the year is reported to be $4,722.52, exactly what their cash on hand was two weeks before the election. The report shows a canceling out of contributions and expenditures, recording $6,000 total for each. But, that's wrong. $6,000 is indeed the amount both in contributions and expenditures that they report receiving and spending after the general election (in this case, technically a primary at the state level, but for us a general, so we will continue to refer to it as such), but they never account for the $16,000 in contributions and $23,110.43 in expenditures that happened in between their first May 10th report and the final report due December 31st. Per Opinion Advisory 2017-01, line item 2 on the Final Report should be copied from line item 15 of the previous report, their prior Net Balance on Hand. Where they record their total contributions previously reported as $37,000, it should instead say $4,722.52. It's obvious why everything that follows is incorrect. If our understanding of Advisory Opinion 2017-01's guidance is correct, this is what their final CCDR should have recorded:

Their net balance was not, as they recorded, still $4,722.52. It was actually -$2,387.91, a difference of $7,110.43. In the grand scheme of things, does this matter? Maybe not. The discrepancy is a less than a drop in the bucket of total campaign spending at the state-wide or national level. Maybe they just misunderstood the accounting system. They did, after all, correctly itemize all their contributions and expenditures -- except for the one they didn't.

Their CCDR Final Report total expenditure is recorded as a flat $6,000, but the only expenditure actually on the disclosure report is for mailers to support Dexter in the run-off at a cost of $3,325.61. Although it's linked on the expenditures tab as being in the final CCDR, the remaining $2,674.39 isn't itemized there. That money is listed as being paid to a vendor called RTA Strategy, paid on December 30th, 2022, for the general 2022 election. Because it isn't properly itemized, it's impossible to know which election or what candidate the expenditure was meant for.

The vendor it went to, RTA Strategy, is a political management firm that offers ethics and disclosure reporting services, among other political and campaign related services. It was founded by a man named Rick Thompson, former Executive Director of the Georgia State Ethics Commission from 2004-2009. After resigning from the commission in 2009, Mr. Thompson founded RTA, where he works closely with his business partner, Jason Boles. Since 2019, Mr. Thompson has been back at the Georgia State Ethics Commission as Vice Chairman while continuing to run RTA Strategy.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading the considerably longer and way more math-y part two of our series attempting to unmask Athens Forward. The next piece will take a closer look at the favorite vendor of Neighbors for a Better Community and Athens for All: American Campaign Advisors, LLC. If any additional disclosures are filed by Athens Forward in the meantime, we will prioritize reporting those updates.

As always, we welcome tips and/feedback. Feel free to email us at systemic.ills@proton.me or message Systemic_Ills.13 on Signal.