This is a semi-regular tracker of late campaign finance report filings for City of Houston elections. I’ll keep this up until either everyone has filed, or we all get sick of it and I move onto other trivial obsessions. With that said, here are today’s contestants:
1. Andrew Burks, District D. Burks actually filed his report on time – it made it onto the city’s CFR website late Friday – but I include him here because I had not been aware he was running, at least not for this particular seat. Burks is a perennial candidate who nonetheless made it into a runoff with CM Sue Lovell last year. As with Griff Griffin, who topped 47% against Lovell in 2007, if he had had any semblance of a campaign or rationale for running other than “there’s nothing good on TV”, he might have actually won. Given that Burks accepted the endorsement of gay-hating Steven Hotze in his runoff against Lovell, I’m glad he lost then and I hope he loses this time as well.
2. Bob Schoellkopf, District A. Like Burks, Schoellkopf filed on Friday; like Burks, I had previously been unaware of his entry into this race; and like Burks, he filed a blank report. These two are the first opponents to district Council members that I know of.
3. Alexander Gonik, District K. Gonik filed a blank report that was posted Sunday. He’s the third candidate to file a report for District K. That is the sum total of my knowledge of him.
4. Bryan Smart, District B. Smart put out a press release Sunday evening touting a fundraising haul of $43,755 in donations, with $24,397.12 on hand. The report appeared this morning. Those numbers dominate those of his opponents, but as with several other candidates, a big chunk of that first figure comes from in-kind donations, including:
– Two $5000 donations, from Ruby Ramirez and Hugo Mojica (who ran in the 2009 special election in H) for “Latino Voter Outreach”.
– A $4000 donation from Jerome Brooks, who sent the aforementioned press release, for “Consulting Services”.
– A $3000 donation from Max Temkin for “Web/Graphic Design”.
– A $1250 donation from the Texas Democratic Party for “Voter File Access”, which I didn’t think you could do as an in-kind donation.
Smart listed less than $1000 in expenditures, so there’s your difference between contributions received and cash on hand.
5. Scott Boates, At Large #1. Boates’ report, which listed contributions of $18,247 and cash on hand of $11,713, was rather a family affair, in that a total of $12,000 – two $5k donations and two $1K donations – came from people with the surname “Boates”. Gotta hit your inner circle first. Boates also loaned himself $1200. On the expense side, he spent $180 each on buttons and balloons, with vendors located in Iowa and New York, respectively, and in my favorite listing since the Pam Holm for Controller koozies, he spent $369.92 at Custom Wristbands in Richmond, TX, for “wristband printing”. I guess those are for entry to the VIP room. Anyway, these are the reports that have been added since last time. The remaining non-filers:
Michael Williams, At Large #2
Griff Griffin, At Large #2
Joe Edmonds, At Large #5
Kenneth Perkins, District B
Randy Locke, District C
Otis Jordan, District K
While going through my archives to find some of the links used in this post, I noticed that Perkins, who was a candidate for At Large #1 in 2009, never filed a finance report that year. I don’t suppose that will change this year. We’ll see who drops off this list tomorrow.
UPDATE: I have since been informed that Otis Jordan is not running, so I have stricken him from the list of non-filers. I have also since received a press release from Jack Christie officially announcing his entry into the At Large #5 field.
TDP offers VAN access to Democratic voters for a fee. The fee is less than the market value of the voter file, so the difference has to be reported as an in-kind. I don’t know what the fee is for district candidates, but for At-Large candidates it’s $1,000 and an in-kind of $4,500.
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