We didn’t have any city of Houston elections in 2017, and while we ought to have some charter amendments on the ballot in 2018 we won’t be voting for people till next year. Still, everyone has to file campaign finance reports. Let’s see how everyone has been doing since last July.
Candidate Office Raised Spent Loan On Hand
===============================================================
S Turner Mayor 308,744 123,288 0 1,901,225
C Brown Controller 1,400 19,559 0 62,811
M Knox At Large 1 36,125 8,191 0 51,946
D Robinson At Large 2 41,575 12,117 0 126,924
M Kubosh At Large 3 8,575 7,364 276,000 32,267
A Edwards At Large 4 16,900 24,311 0 140,866
J Christie At Large 5 1,264 3,892 0 28,711
B Stardig Dist A 3,750 18,173 0 89,964
J Davis Dist B 5,934 15,988 0 137,038
E Cohen Dist C 10,100 31,528 0 41,691
D Boykins Dist D 27,950 66,249 0 18,492
D Martin Dist E 2,510 26,887 0 92,371
S Le Dist F 21,800 11,237 30,823 13,015
G Travis Dist G 27,050 8,211 76,000 70,817
K Cisneros Dist H
R Gallegos Dist I 32,850 12,963 0 69,181
M Laster Dist J 300 8,510 0 161,402
L Green Dist K 29,100 36,617 0 77,110
I started writing this post before the tragic death of CM Larry Green. CM Green was among the members who are term-limited; the others are Stardig, Davis, Cohen, Laster, and Christie. I did not find a finance report for Karla Cisneros; she had $25,336 on hand in the July ’17 report. No one raised a whole lot – not a big surprise, especially given how there was already a bunch of Congressional fundraising going on in the latter half of 2017 – and in fact many people spent more than they took in. If one of the potential negatives to the change to four-year terms was that it gave incumbents that much more time to accumulate cash, I’d say that effect has so far been muted. Among the first-termers, Amanda Edwards was a big money-raiser in 2015 and Greg Travis still has loan money. Mike Knox got a boost in this period, which he will need because he’s got a big target on his back for 2019. Steve Le doesn’t have much on hand, but he too can self-fund to an extent.
While those term-limited candidates continue to be among the top cash-holders, none of them increased their shares during this period. I continue to believe that at least some of them have another candidacy in their near-term future, but that’s just my impression. Some of the possibilities they may contemplate will depend on how the 2018 elections go. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. I’m just reporting what we know now. I’ll check back in July. Look for a post on the HISD and HCC reports as soon as I can get around to it.