We’re less than a month out from Election Day, and that means that the candidates in the special election for Houston City Council At Large #4 need to file 30 day finance reports. The July reports included reports from two candidates, Jordan Thomas and Alejandra Salinas, though only Salinas had something to report. Here’s what we’ve got for the 30 days:
Candidate Raised Spent Loan On Hand
=======================================================
Plummer 174 23,734 0 4,586
Boykins 108,996 20,053 0 88,942
Salinas 197,272 189,469 25,000 273,618
Thomas 18,244 0 0
Rivera 2,289 383 10,500 12,450
Lloyd 3,790 6,720 5,000
Dixon 6,595 341 0
Thibodeaux 509 850 0 485
Letitia Plummer’s report, which is the first one I’ve seen filed by her since the 2023 election, has a “submit date” of September 3, and it says it covers the July-December 2024 period. Go figure. At least now we have some idea of what she has in her treasury, though of course she could have raised a bunch more this year. At this point, unless she files another city report, the next chance we’ll have to find out will be January. I’m including it here as a point of reference when we look at the county reports then.
Only seven of the candidates had reports filed in the system. With three exceptions, all of their forms were screwed up in one way or another. Jordan Thomas properly totaled and itemized his contributions, but had nothing about expenditures. Martina Lemond Dixon, who has run for city office before, had a blank summary page, contribution and expenditure numbers on the subtotals page, and no itemizations. Al Lloyd had a blank summary page but did appear to correctly list his numbers on the subtotals page, and he did itemize them. Sonia Rivera gave her contribution and expenditure totals in the wrong boxes on the summary page, then had different contribution numbers (cash plus in kind) on the subtotals page; she too did at least itemize them. Those two came the closest to getting it right.
Dwight Boykins, Alejandra Salinas, and Angie Thibodeaux had reports that at least looked like they were correctly filled in. Boykins got contributions from former State Reps. Helen Giddings of Dallas and Glenn Lewis of Fort Worth, plus a few PACs including the Houston Apartment Association and the Texas Realtors. Salinas’ report included quite a few familiar Dem names, including former State Rep. and Council Member Ellen Cohen, current State Rep. Christina Morales, and current HISD Trustee Placido Gomez; she also got contributions from several labor PACs and a number of law firms. Thibodeaux’s one contribution appears to have been from her previous campaign for State Rep. Most of her expenditures were made from personal funds.
To the extent that people will vote for names they recognize, it sure looks like those Salinas and Boykins are the frontrunners. Salinas, who has been running online ads, has enough funds to do a reasonable amount of outreach. Boykins has solid name ID and enough to do some advertising. The rest face steeper challenges. I’ll check again at the eight day deadline to see if anything changes.