Moving on to the 30-day campaign finance reports for the hot State Rep races outside the Houston area. As noted, a lot of candidates have been reporting big hauls, as has the HDCC, the fundraising committee for State House Democrats. As you know, I have split these into four parts. Part one, with statewide, SBOE, and State Senate, is here. Part two, with State House races from the Houston area, is here. Part three is this post, and part four will be for Democratic incumbents that may be targeted. I’m not going to be doing every race of course, just the ones of interest. I did not do the January reports for these races as there were just too damn many of them, but the July reports for these candidates are here.
Janet Dudding, HD14
John Raney, HD14
Eric Holguin, HD32
Todd Hunter, HD32
Keke Williams, HD54
Brad Buckley, HD54
Angela Brewer, HD64
Lynn Stucky, HD64
Sharon Hirsch, HD66
Matt Shaheen, HD66
Lorenzo Sanchez, HD67
Jeff Leach, HD67
John Gibson, HD84
John Frullo, HD84
Ray Ash, HD89
Candy Noble, HD89
Jeff Whitfield, HD92
Jeff Cason, HD92
Lydia Bean, HD93
Matt Krause, HD93
Alisa Simmons, HD94
Tony Tinderholt, HD94
Joe Drago, HD96
David Cook, HD96
Elizabeth Beck, HD97
Craig Goldman, HD97
Jennifer Skidonenko, HD106
Jared Patterson, HD106
Joanna Cattanach, HD108
Morgan Meyer, HD108
Brandy Chambers, HD112
Angie Chen Button, HD112
Celina Montoya, HD121
Steve Allison, HD121
Dist Candidate Raised Spent Loan On Hand
==============================================================
HD14 Dudding 42,842 32,648 782 26,806
HD14 Raney 97,966 54,748 0 151,707
HD32 Holguin 55,568 41,276 0 14,292
HD32 Hunter 121,555 367,428 0 1,889,407
HD54 Williams 336,235 132,484 0 164,094
HD54 Buckley 435,989 20,313 30,300 303,905
HD64 Brewer 361,767 46,208 0 274,953
HD64 Stucky 323,609 79,398 0 255,623
HD66 Hirsch 419,159 150,523 0 324,489
HD66 Shaheen 253,546 41,857 122,000 302,131
HD67 Sanchez 692,854 206,865 0 233,734
HD67 Leach 531,541 111,167 0 485,813
HD84 Gibson 12,339 8,486 0 8,419
HD84 Frullo 34,525 11,045 0 352,123
HD89 Ash 4,763 3,112 10,419 1,375
HD89 Noble 41,690 9,648 130,000 151,748
HD92 Whitfield 362,947 222,294 19,700 236,445
HD92 Cason 219,158 241,377 5,000 1,305
HD93 Bean 219,347 63,322 0 198,808
HD93 Krause 194,110 244,470 0 516,077
HD94 Simmons 184,169 103,134 0 76,662
HD94 Tinderholt 304,348 251,650 0 48,878
HD96 Drago 321,421 146,177 0 201,787
HD96 Cook 409,945 100,664 0 370,913
HD97 Beck 501,011 280,456 0 263,172
HD97 Goldman 196,361 424,645 0 636,186
HD106 Skidonenko 53,210 50,246 1,635 15,862
HD106 Patterson 47,529 23,342 0 118,921
HD108 Cattanach 463,416 174,579 0 334,465
HD108 Meyer 565,760 183,019 0 647,878
HD112 Chambers 533,343 319,804 0 216,982
HD112 Button 512,117 83,976 0 953,840
HD121 Montoya 442,962 120,219 0 325,985
HD121 Allison 494,527 123,631 235,000 222,336
The difference between the races that are being seriously contested as a part of the State House takeover effort and those than are not is pretty clear. I would have liked to see more of an investment in Janet Dudding and Eric Holguin and Jennifer Skidonenko, but that’s not the direction that was taken. I admit they’re longer shots than the others, and they’ve done all right by themselves. We’ll see if we look at any of them as missed opportunities. As for John Gibson and Ray Ash, I’m probably the only person outside their immediate circle that has tracked them this closely. I see those districts, or at least those parts of the state, as future opportunities. May as well place the marker now.
As noted before, there’s a lot of in kind contributions on these reports, which tend to be campaign activity financed by the respective parties’ legislative PACs, Associated Republicans of Texas and the House Democratic Campaign Committee (HDCC). In some cases, like with Brad Buckley in HD54, this activity is most if not all of what is happening. One presumes Buckley would have spent more than $20K on his own re-election if that hadn’t been covered by the ART. You really have to look at the individual reports to get a feel for who’s being bolstered the most and who’s mostly pulling their own weight.
On that latter point, some of the decisions that I presume the committees are making are fascinating. Craig Goldman and Matt Krause were both sitting on a bunch of cash in July, so it makes sense that they were mostly doing their own spending. Morgan Meyer and Angie Chen Button were also loaded as of July, and yet both had over $200K spent on them. Maybe that represents a desire to keep at least one Republican State Rep in Dallas County, I don’t know. Like I said, these decisions are fascinating, and as someone viewing them from the outside, all I can do is speculate.
On the other side of that coin, Tony Tinderholt (running for re-election) and Jeff Cason (defending an open seat) had to spend themselves down to paltry levels, for reasons not fully clear to me. I get that even for state Republicans, the money isn’t infinite, but you’d think that you wouldn’t want to leave guys like that so exposed as we’re getting down to the wire. I’m open to suggestions as to what’s up with that.
Kudos to Lorenzo Sanchez, Elizabeth Beck, and Brandy Chambers for really hitting it out of the park, with Celina Montoya, Joanna Cattanach, and Sharon Hirsch right behind them. All of the Dem challengers are at least within parity of the Republicans, and that’s about all you can ask.
I don’t know how seriously to take this, but there was some polling of competitive districts, reported by Reform Austin, which includes a number of these candidates. Make of it as you will.
One more of these to come, looking at the targeted Dem legislators. I’ll have the Congressional finance reports next week. Let me know what you think.