July Quarterly Reports in AZ CD 8 race

Not all of the FEC filings are in, but enough are to be able to report a few interesting facts.

Latas’ report is still unretrievable. Huffman’s was finally processed  and reviewable on July 20th.

Patty Weiss brought in $134,589.14 this quarter, giving her a grand total of $308,308.14. Expenditures of $130K left her with $175K in cash on hand. Given that she raised over $173K last quarter, this quarter hasn’t been as strong. I feel sure the campaign is privately somewhat disappointed at the results.

On the top spin, Patty needs less resources to get her name and image out to primary voters, so less money won’t be a crippling handicap to her. Patty had very low PAC contributions of just $5500. This could indicate that she is turning off special interests (which could be good), or that she is not seen by political insiders as a secure bet (which could be bad). Patty’s only PAC donors were a $2500 bump from the American Psychiatric Society and an in-kind contribution of $3000 worth of targeting data from the National Committee for an Effective Congress.

Gabby Giffords raked in $291,805.96 in this quarter, giving her a grand total of $861,712.68. I would say that is all to the good, but it does fall short of expectations. Gabbby’s campaign burned through $274K this quarter, leaving her with a respectable warchest of $588K heading into the primary. Gabby raised over $320K last quarter, and was widely anticipated to break $1 million in total funding this quarter: instead she just barely beat the campaign’s managed expectations target of $850K. It sucks, but being the front-runner means that people tend to inflate even the slightest stumble into a major injury. On the flip side, nobody in the race, Democrat or Republican, got even close to Gabby’s numbers.

Significant staff payroll costs and consultancy/polling costs contribute to a fairly high burn rate in both Gabby’s and Patty’s campaigns, which left Patty pretty much where she began the quarter in terms of cash on hand. Gabby spent $179K vs. $130K spent by Weiss. What you are see in these fairly close figures, given the disparity in their fundraising, is the fiscal reality of running a staffed professional campaign with all the attendant expenses of payroll, rent, equipment, travel, etc. Giffords actually seems to be running fairly lean. The additional $50K in Gabby’s expenditures is largely due to Gabby’s retention of heavyweight political communications consultants GMMB of Philadelphia for her television ads ($27,000+) and Greenberg, Quilan, Rosner Research for an major internal poll ($26,700). Boy, I would like to see that poll. Seriously.

Except for those two big splashes, there hasn’t been much media spending beyond direct mail and web publication, as yet. Leaving aside those two expenditures, the two campaigns’ spending is remarkably similar. Giffords does take hiring talent quite seriously, though, she has Steve Farley on a monthly $500 retainer for graphic design. She’s also already spending to create a Spanish language media strategy with REA Communication, which specializes in Spanish advertising. Gabby also appears to be quite serious about creating a compelling spoken message; she appears to have hired Tucson playwrite W. Jesse Greenberg as a writing consultant – who better to appreciate the impact of the spoken word?

Mike Hellon had to give his campaign another infusion of self-financing with a loan of $30K, on top of the $40K seed money he loaned the campaign last quarter. He raised an underwhelming $66K+ in contributions this quarter, though it beat his last quarter by a few thousand dollars. Despite rumours of strong polling in internals (AZ8th blog has Graf 30%, Hellon 12%, Huffman 4%), Hellon’s campaign is still looking like much seed, little crop – or as the popular political vernacular puts it, all hat, no cattle.

Graf generated surprising fundraising momentum this quarter, despite the Aiken scandal (proving once again that I consistently give GOP primary voters and donors too much credit). Graf more than doubled his receipts of $62K from last quarter, raking in a respectable $161,446.45 for a total to date of $292,258.78. With internal polling figures seeming to bear out his appeal, accelerating fundraising, and his demonstrated teflon coating, I’m going to have to stand corrected and concede that Graf is turning out to be a potential nominee, and not just a golf-bible thumping twit (though he’ll always be that in my heart), after all.

Graf seems to be getting some large dollar donations from out of state now. I would guess that Bay Buchanan has cranked up her national direct mail operation on Graf’s behalf, and that’s where Graf’s new financial vitality stems from. That hypothesis is supported by the nearly $90K Graf has spent on direct mail just this quarter. It takes money to make money, you know.

No big surprises from other campaigns. Alex Rodriguez continued his prior pace of fundraising by logging $15,236.55. Frank Antenori continues to live off the land in comando style with a slim $5943.97 raised. They are both attractive candidates, but I fear this may not be the year of the warriors. Francine Shacter recieved $390.34, and Mike Jenkins picked up $1973.91, from small donors. Independent Jay Quick has quickly burned through almost $20K of his initial $55K loan to his own campaign, and has picked up only $100 in actual contributions so far. Most of Quick’s expeditures thus far have been for paid petitioners; I guess Independent volunteers are pretty thin on the ground.

One major, and unwelcome, surprise was the entry into the Democratic field of Bill Johnson (see ‘Who is Bill Johnson?‘). Bill give his campaign a fat loan of $58,044.42 for the race. I don’t why the loan figure is so oddly specific, but perhaps it’s so his utter lack of any actual fundraising might go unnoticed. I strongly suspect that ol’ ‘Traditional Democrat’ Bill won’t be doing much fundraising, simply because he doesn’t actually like Democrats.

Even more interesting is Bill Johnson’s expenditures. He’s already spent over $30K of his seed money. Over $15K went to his ‘campaign manager,’ racist xenophobe Graf supporter Russ Dove, in a lump sum. Over $11K went to buy voter info from the County Recorder. Think that info might end up being used to create caging lists and otherwise suppress the Democratic vote at the general election? I do. Finally, almost $5K went to someone named Justis Forbes in Bisbee Arizona for ‘consulting’. My theory is that Johnson wanted a way to launder $50K+ for a dirty tricks campaign in support of Graf and figures that running a bogus Democratic nomination campaign is the best way to do that with the bonus of getting access to Democratic party info.

This post will be updated as additional information becomes available. I have ignored the candidate’s press releases regarding their fundraising. I find they are seldom as interesting as the actual reports.