In my roundup of April finance reports for Congress, I said I’d do a comparison of the 2018 numbers to 2020. I’m a blogger of his word, so let’s have that look.
Dist Year Name Raised Spent Loans On Hand
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02 18 Litton 546,503 304,139 0 242,363
02 20 Ladjevardian 1,133,296 930,810 50,000 202,485
03 18 Burch 104,700 116,639 25,649 14,085
03 18 Johnson 62,473 59,143 3,100 6,490
03 20 McCaffity 387,506 313,098 0 74,407
03 20 Seikaly 252,591 232,038 3,000 20,552
06 18 Sanchez 241,893 188,313 0 56,456
06 18 Woolridge 75,440 45,016 15,000 47,708
06 20 Daniel 196,861 187,942 7,500 8,918
10 18 Siegel 80,319 65,496 5,000 19,823
10 18 Cadien
10 20 Siegel 664,291 542,317 10,000 125,464
10 20 Gandhi 1,011,877 948,927 0 62,949
21 18 Kopser 1,100,451 846,895 25,000 278,556
21 18 Wilson 44,772 51,041 26,653 20,384
21 20 Davis 3,047,765 1,094,009 0 1,953,755
22 18 Kulkarni 178,925 158,369 35,510 56,067
22 18 Plummer 108,732 99,153 0 9,578
22 20 Kulkarni 1,564,263 1,226,088 0 365,942
23 18 Ortiz Jones 1,025,194 703,481 0 321,713
23 18 Trevino 16,892 20,416 3,285 3,915
23 20 Ortiz Jones 3,310,358 1,024,041 3,024 2,377,835
24 18 McDowell 33,452 16,100 0 17,470
24 20 Olson 1,231,183 1,028,804 20,000 202,378
24 20 Valenzuela 647,105 506,708 0 140,397
25 18 Oliver 78,841 37,812 3,125 40,860
25 18 Perri 139,016 133,443 24,890 30,603
25 20 Oliver 464,623 427,972 2,644 36,651
31 18 Hegar 458,085 316,854 0 141,240
31 18 Mann 56,814 58,856 2,276 0
31 20 Mann 277,815 278,885 44,500 367
31 20 Imam 363,194 223,126 100,000 140,068
I included losing candidates from primary runoffs in 2018 as well, as they were still in the race at that time. I did not include the high-dollar races in CDs 07 and 32 – Lizzie Fletcher and Laura Moser had each raised over $1M by this point, with Colin Allred and Lillian Salerno combining for close to $1.4M – because I wanted to focus only on challengers. Reps. Fletcher and Allred are doing quite well in this department now, they’re just in a different category. It’s clear there’s a lot more money now than there was in 2018, which I attribute mostly to the national Democratic focus on many of these races. Only CDs 03, 06, and 25 are not official targets, but any of them could get bumped up if the environment gets more favorable or the nominees step it up another level. Both CD03 candidates and the 2020 version of Julie Oliver are well ahead of the 2018 pace, while Stephen Daniel was a later entrant in CD06 and may catch up in the next report.
We eventually got used to the big numbers from 2018, which I repeatedly noted were completely unprecedented for Democratic Congressional challengers in Texas, and so there’s less of an “ooh, ahh” factor when we look at this year’s numbers, but let’s not totally lose our ability to be wowed. Joe Kopser raised a ton of money in 2018, and Wendy Davis has left him in the dust, taking in three times as much at this point. Sri Kulkarni has nearly matched his entire total from 2018, while Gina Ortiz Jones is doing to herself what Wendy Davis is doing to Joe Kopser. Throw in Sima Ladjevardian and both Kim Olson and Candace Valenzuela, and wow. We do need to appreciate where we are now, because there was a long time when anything like this would have been unthinkable. Hell, you can count on one hand the number of statewide candidates from 2004 to 2016 who raised as much as these Congressional candidates have done so far.
There’s also a lot more spending, as four candidates have already dropped a million bucks, with Ladjevardian and Pritesh Gandhi not far behind. Those two plus Sri Kulkarni and Kim Olson were in competitive primaries, with Olson and Gandhi in the runoffs, while Wendy Davis and Gina Ortiz Jones had much less formidable opposition. I have to assume the latter two did most of their spending with an eye towards November.
I will admit that some of the cash on hand totals from this year’s report had me nervous, but doing this comparison mostly alleviates those concerns. I am of course still worried about the environment for raising money now, but there’s only so much one can worry about it, and as we saw in the previous post there was no noticeable slowdown for the month of March. We’ll see what the July numbers look like.
If there is a cause for concern, it’s in CD31, which has been a soft spot in the lineup from the beginning. Christine Eady Mann and Donna Imam seem to have finally hit a stride in fundraising after the entire field, including several who dropped out along the way, got off to a slow start, though Mann continues a pattern from 2018 of spending every dollar she takes in. Neither has matched MJ Hegar’s pace from 2018, and I seriously doubt they’ll do any better going forward. That’s a high hurdle to clear – Hegar eventually raised over $5 million – but I’m more hopeful now that whoever emerges in that race can at least be competitive.
The next finance reports of interest will be the 30-day reports for state candidates, and then the June reports for county candidates. You know I’ll be on them when they come out. As always, let me know what you think.