Candidates paying well for signatures

The crowded governors race has some candidates putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to job creation and helping the local economy. At least until June 12.

Nearly all of the candidates working to petition their way onto the August primary ballot are paying petition circulators to collect signatures, and the salaries they are offering are competitive.

Businessman Bob Stefanowski is paying the highest rate — offering $25 an hour base pay and $30 an hour if it’s raining.

He’s also offering a $30 bonus for collecting more than 30 signatures in a day, and a $50 bonus for collecting more than 40 signatures per day.

Pat Trueman, Stefanowski’s campaign manager, said the signature collection staff is made up of about 60 percent paid employees and 40 percent volunteers.

“I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised with the volunteer turnout,” Trueman said.

Petitioning candidates must collect signatures from 2 percent of voters registered in their party — for Democrats that’s more than 15,000 and for Republicans it’s around 9,100. Canvassers must be registered in the same party as the candidate, per state statute.

But Stefanowski — who has collected around 7,000 signatures — isn’t the only candidate offering a rate well above the minimum wage for signature collection.

On the Democratic side, Guy Smith, the Greenwich businessman who opted out of the convention process, is sticking to his campaign promise for a $15 minimum wage.

His canvassers wages start at $15 per hour, campaign manager Beth Davies said.

Smith’s staff is made up of about 50 paid canvassers and about 100 volunteers, Davies said.

“Luckily we have a lot of interest of people wanting to volunteer and help out, so we have a lot of help that way,” Dwain Schenck, Smith’s communications director, said.

Ted Lorson, a spokesman for Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim’s campaign, said the campaign is paying people to collect signatures but declined to say how much.

“We have an army of committed people collecting signatures all over the state, some paid and some volunteers,” Lorson said.

“Unfortunately, we are not going to detail how people are being paid at this time. That information will be available when the second-quarter finance expenditure reports are filed.”

Lincoln Strategy Group

Hiring petition circulators may be a time-honored tradition, but it’s not without pitfalls.

A Craigslist advertisement posted April 27 — the Friday before candidates could even begin collecting signatures — under the “customer service” jobs board, offers $20 an hour plus a stipend to registered Republicans interested in collecting signatures for a petitioning candidate.

The advertisement asks interested candidates to sign up through a link, which leads to Lincoln Strategy Group, an Arizona-based consulting firm led by political operative Nathan Sproul, whose roster of companies has been repeatedly investigated for voter registration fraud.

The Craigslist advertisement does not specify who the candidate is and employees at Lincoln Strategy Group declined to provide the name of the candidate. It’s not Stefanowski’s campaign, Trueman confirmed.

Greenwich hedge fund manager David Stemerman has been collecting signatures to make it onto the Republican ballot since May 1. Stemerman, who is self-funding his campaign, did not return a request for comment on the advertisement.

Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, is the only other Republican candidate attempting to petition onto the ballot, but he did not plan to petition until after the Republican nominating convention at Foxwoods Resort Casino on May 12 where he failed to pick up 15 percent of delegate votes to qualify for the primary.

Lauretti did not return a request for comment.