Pre-Primary FEC Filings for CD 8 Candidates

DEMOCRATS:

Gabby Giffords:

Leading the pack in fundraising again is Gabby Giffords, who raked in an additional $270K over the last two months. That pops the 1 million mark for Gabby, giving her a total $1.113 million raised for the race, and $334K cash on hand as of 8/23/06. Gabby raised most her money, $237K, from individuals, and a modest $32K from PACs. Interesting donations include $1K from Rep. Grijalva, the same amount from Democratic Congressman Dan Boren of Oklahoma, and $5K from the Sierra Club.

Her operating expenses for the period have been a hefty $524K. More than half of that went for ads through GMMB. She paid almost 30K for a mailing to Emily’s List, and a lot of other direct mail besides. The rest went on the normal big campaign costs: postage, printing, people and infrastructure.

Patty Weiss:

Patty’s fundraising wasn’t very strong over the last two months. She booked a total of $74K, $20K of which is self-financing, which when compared to the previous three months total of $134K, is way off her previous pace, and fraction of what Gabby is posting. Her campaign spent a total of $147K, leaving her with cash on hand as of 8/23/06 of $91K with $31K in debt.

Her operating expenses are mainly printing, postage, and people. There is only $30K in ad buys, and another 10K on polling. If I had only one peice of advice for this campaign it would be to stop polling, and start pushing ads out on the air. They don’t have Gabby’s resources, but spending less than a quarter of your resources on air is poor idea in any case.

Bill Johnson:

I predicted some time back that Bill Johnson would self-finance to the tune of up to $150K. This was promptly denied, but Bill is now up to $188K in self-finance, exceeding my target. He still hasn’t raised any money from actual voters beyond himself yet, and I, nor he, for that matter, expect him do so.

The Johnson ‘campaign’ has blown through about $70K in the past two months, which is why he’s deservedly listed 3rd here. He blew about 20K on those really bad billboards that hillariously read "Stop the Johnson Invasion!". Tell you what Bill, if you want to blow your money on an inept campaign, I would be happy to take your money to make you look an ass.

Bill spent a great deal of dough on lots of radio ads and some print media, too, but he’s really plowed the cash to his ‘manager’ Russ Dove (whose job description apparently involves getting arrested for burning Mexican flags in as provacative a manner as possible). Russ pocketed about $5400 bucks in the past two months. Not bad pay for just placing ads and getting arrested. Russ is clearly a genius marketer; only he would have realized that "Lovin’ Life After 50"‘s Tucson metro edition has such a massive audience that it would be worthwhile to buy over $5200 of ad space in that fine publication. To be fair, he did have the presence of mind to buy over $3000 in ad space in the Desert Leaf, which actually has a very respectable circulation in part of the district. I’m sure our local publishers and radio broadcasters are very appreciative of the Johnson ‘campaign’.

Jeff Latas:

Jeff is late again for this filing. This is getting to be a habit. Come on, people!

Alex Rodriguez:

Alex scored another $10K in the last two months. He spent about $6700. I gotta say that he doesn’t seem to have gotten all that much help from
the national consultancy outfit, Christensen and Associates, he retained and
bled out $2500 of his hard-won warchest for this reporting period. He readily admits that the roughly $8K he has left won’t be enough for a major air war, but he is planning a mini-blitz, shooting off all his ammo, just prior to the primary. So don’t blink.

Francine Shacter:

Francine has not yet filed her pre-primary either. I just hoped she raised enough to give all of CD 8 one of her pens and a bag of her M&Ms. You didn’t get a bag of M&Ms from Francine? Well… I guess you just aren’t as special as I am.

REPUBLICANS:

Randy Graf:

Randy moves into the pole position this reporting period. He raised an impressive $191K, outstripping the rest of a GOP field. He’s leading the pack and feeling his oats. Nothin’ feels quite as good to Graf as making Huffy and Hellboy his Huckleberries. He’s stridding into the primary head and shoulders above his opponents in the polls, and closing the money gap that has plagued and shamed his campaign. Now he’s spent $160K in the period, and retains $82K in hand.

He spent 50K on some ads, yo. You best believe they’re coming at you, even if y’aint seen them yet. He also caught some fly donations: the Minute Men PAC for $10K, Team America (Tancredo and Bay Buchanan’s outfit) for $2500, and $5K worth of anti-doctor ammunition from National Right to Life. It’s the whole cycle of fascist life in one finance report: first we refuse to teach birth control and stop funding for abortion everywhere in Mexico, then we smuggle all those new, unwanted babies over the boarder via the Minute Men (Dude, of course they be trafficking baby slaves out there…. what, you thought they was looking for wet-backs? Dude, there’s no cheddar in stoppin’ the traffic. You gots to control da flow.), and then Team America puts them to work in their Mariannas Islands’ sweat shops to make their political hats, t-shirts, stickers and other campaign clutter. This is how politics on the right works, folks. Pay attention. There will be a test – low scores will be deported (or put to work in sweat shops).

Steve Huffman:

Steve scampered out of his spider hole long enough to gather up a respectable, but still second-rate, $163K. Note that, for the first time, Graf has outraised Huffman. That looks a lot like a turning point to me, my friends. Huffy spent a whole lotta money, too: over $404K, leaving him with $172K as of the end of August.

For all the traction he’s getting with his media attacks on Graf, he would have been wiser to just take it out in singles, fill a pool with the money, and throw Graf in. He’s short and he can’t swim. Problem solved.

Or one can pay the Swift Boat media firm Stevens, Reed, Curcio, and Potholm over $330K to do all that for you – but on tv – with an animatroic Graf. This is apparently the option Steve chose. Huffy is communicatin’ like a mad dog with over 80% of his cheddar going on the airwaves.

Mike Hellon:

Mike raised $62K from donors, and chipped in another $45K of self-financing, for a total of $107K. His campaign spent $120K, and has on hand at the end of August $34K with outstanding debt of $115K. In short, Mike is hurtin’ for the cheese, in the big mac daddy way.

What did his 120 large buy? He bought a poll for $4K from American Viewpoint. He bought one or more ads, did some radio, some direct mail, signs, staff, field, yada yada. In all, his media buys were robust. He racked up nearly $60K in broadcast media buys, mostly focused on local tv, cable, and radio. The rest of his bootie went for print, postage, and people (he’s got a very lean staff) and some digs with infrastructure.

He’s putting his money where it matters. Note: he spent about 50% of his available budget on broadcast media buys (not including production and design). So did Gabby. That’s puttin’ your mouth were your money is, buckos.

Mike Jenkins:

Seems Mike hit pay dirt. He raised more in this 2 month pre-primary than in any previous quarter. He netted in $3800 and change. After spending more than $4500 on what is likely to be his major media push of for the primary (buying signs, lit, and some radio time), he’s left to make due with about $1500.

Frank Antenori:

Still no filing for Frank. What is it with these action-figure guys like Frank and Jeff? Too busy kickin’ butt to take any names and turn ’em in to the Gubment for sissy-boy accountants to look at?

OTHERS:

Jay Quick (I):

Is, ironically, not so quick with the forms.

Dave Nolan (L):

The only real fun in Nolan’s filing is the $2K that the Marijuana Policy Project dropped on Nolan. That constitutes the largest contribution to his campaign, besides his own, and more than 1/6th of what he raised this period. If you smell something funny when you see Dave, don’t call a narc, he’s just caucusing with his constituency.

But I kid because I love. I think it’s great that common sense on drug policy is crossing the ideological divide over the bridge of the Libertarian party. I would be pleased if Democrats would more widely emulate the principled stance of the Libertarians on this issue.