Last June, there was much discussion in the left-wing blogosphere over a party thrown by Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner at the YearlyKos convention in Las Vegas. Held at the landmark Stratosphere, the party, which was reported to cost $50,000, featured all sorts of lavish food and drink, leading some Kossacks to suspect that Warner was trying to buy their good favor. “I was hearing a lot of grumbling about Warner’s decision to spend so much money buttering up the Kossack crowd,” wrote one blogger . “I’ve worked in and out of corporate America for 25 years (and personally witnessed Howard Dean’s phenomenal $40 million burn) and I’ve never been to this kind of truly excessive party,” wrote another .

Well, it turns out Warner was trying even harder than anyone knew. Recently-released campaign finance reports indicate Warner’s political action committee spent nearly $70,000 on the affair, writing a $25,000 check to the Stratosphere on June 2, and another for $44,588.95 on June 9. And that was just the Stratosphere. Warner clearly spent money in other ways — T-shirts and the like — trying to win Kossack favor, so it’s not completely clear what his final YearlyKos expenditure was.