It almost seems a bit silly to look at the January campaign finance reports, since the 30 days out report is due in two weeks, but I’ve created a Google spreadsheet with summaries for the statewide candidates. A couple of observations:
– We know Bill White did a fine job in the brief time he had since switching races. The question is whether he can keep it up. I feel confident that both Perry and KBH will have much less cash on hand after the primary, so he won’t be playing catch-up as much, but he’ll always need to maintain a brisk pace. The time to start running ads introducing himself to the rest of Texas is sooner than you think, and that’s gonna cost a ton.
– I don’t know what to make of Farouk Shami. He’s loaned himself plenty of cash, which will sustain him at least as far as the primary, but he hardly raised anything. Maybe no one wants to donate to him at this time, and maybe he prefers to wait till he’s the nominee, if that happens. I just find it curious.
– Thanks in part to all the late entrances, nobody in the Lite Guv primary has any money. Linda Chavez-Thompson didn’t have a report to look at yet. I’m surprised Marc Katz hadn’t loaned himself anything. Why not take advantage of your opponents’ poverty and run some ads on TV? We all know David Dewhurst can write his own check, and he did report more than a million dollars in loans for the period, but he had less than $1.5 million on hand, which is chump change compared to the gubernatorials. I’m wondering how hard he’s going to work to raise more dough for November.
– Barbara Radnofsky had a decent haul considering how few people have been paying attention to the AG’s race, but Greg Abbott has over $10 million on hand. You think he’s hoping that this time – please, pretty please! – KBH really means it? Surely he doesn’t think he really needs that big a pile to run for re-election again.
– None of the lower tier incumbents have as much as a million dollars on hand. Hank Gilbert and Kinky Friedman combined to raise about 2/3 as much as Todd Staples did, while Jeff Weems was near parity with Victor Carrillo on that score. (In the Land Commish race, Hector Uribe did not have a report yet, while Bill Burton may as well have not had one.) We’ve seen in the 2006 and 2008 elections that downballot Dems who don’t get monetarily swamped by Republican incumbents don’t do that badly. Seems to me that this is an opportunity for the Dems to sneak up on someone.
– I haven’t yet really looked at the State Rep races, but the Trib took a peek at a few of interest for the primaries. One they curiously omitted was the rubber match between Rep. Al Edwards – $35,674.66 raised, $43,022.36 spent, $14,885.88 on hand; unlike previous years has reports no substantial contributions from the Craddick machine, though he did get $20,000 from Bob and Doylene Perry – and former Rep. Borris Miles – $7,525.00 raised, $68,481.07 spent, $89,043.93 on hand, including $565,000.00 in outstanding loans, of which $150,000 is from this cycle.
Anyway. The 30 day and 8 day reports should be more revealing. At least this year Dems can expect to not be completely outgunned at the state level.
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