First Greg Abbott’s campaign announces that he has more than $35 million cash on hand. Since Abbott was already the prohibitive favorite, hearing that he’s shattered Texas gubernatorial fundraising records wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine for Team Wendy.
Second, a Dallas Morning News headline proclaims that “Hollywood luminaries, labor and trial lawyers fuel Wendy Davis campaign.” Thus reminding everyone yet again that Davis is a liberal media darling whose fundraising occurs out of state because she’s far more popular in Hollywood than in Texas.
Instead of $13.1 million in cash on hand as claimed, the reports Davis and her allies filed show there was actually $12.8 million in the bank at the end of June, a difference of about $300,000.
Meanwhile, the $11.2 million Davis claims she raised over the latest period — an amount she said was larger than the $11.1 million Abbott raised — contains over half a million dollars in non-cash “in-kind” donations and counts contributions that could benefit other Democratic candidates.
One of the biggest sources of non-cash donations: a $250,000 in-kind contribution from country singing legend Willie Nelson. That’s how much the red-headed stranger told the campaign he would have charged for a free concert he gave at the senator’s Houston fundraiser, the campaign said.
The lower-than-advertised cash figure and non-traditional accounting methods raise questions about how much money can be accurately attributed to Davis for the latest period.
Also this:
It was the cash-on-hand figure from Battleground Texas that came in lower than advertised. In the press release, the Davis campaign said Battleground would report $1.1 million in the bank. But Battleground told the Ethics Commission it only had $806,000 in the bank.
That’s a double-dose of good news: The hopeless Davis campaign is sucking up money that might go to competitive races nationwide, and the well is running dry on Battleground Texas, which might conceivably be able to swing a few down-ballot races with better funding.
I’m on enough mailing lists that I get a lot of campaign/PAC/etc. solicitations. One of the ones I get pretty regularly in email are missives from “Patriots for Economic Freedom” seemingly soliciting for one or another notable conservative candidates.
Take, for example, this one for Ted Cruz. They’ve also done solicitations featuring Allen West and Mia Love, and I just got one this morning for Oklahoma Senate candidate T. W. Shannon.
That’s right: “Patriots for Economic Freedom” is a scam PAC, and has been pulling their scam since at least 2012.
I don’t know who exactly is selling Patriots for Economic Freedom their email list (though I’m looking in your direction, NRO and Breitbart), but they need to stop. Every dollar spent supporting a scam PAC is a dollar not spent actually supporting a conservative candidate.
And someone should consider suing Patriots for Economic Freedom for false advertising.
Wendy Davis spent $4,172,161.26 to garner 432,056 votes, or $9.66 a vote.
Greg Abbott spent $8,109,379.17 to garner 1,219,831 votes, or $6.65 a vote.
David Dewhurst spent $4,093,809.73 for 376,164 votes, or $10.88 a vote.
Dan Patrick spent $4,891,374.86 for 550,742 votes, or $8.88 a vote.
The highest amount per vote was spent by Republican Chart Westcott for state House District 108, spending an eye-popping $1,197,762.24 for a measly 3,709 votes, or $322.9 per vote (which did get him into the runoff). Second biggest amount spent for vote? House Speaker (and Tea Party foe) Joe Straus House District 121 (R) spent $2,578,942.72 to get 9,224 votes, or $279.59 a vote. I guess Straus’ special interest backers consider it money well-spent.
Most effective use of money? The two sitting Supreme Court incumbents who didn’t spend anything:
Jeff Brown received 820,558 votes for zero spent.
Phil Johnson received 731,247 votes for zero spent.
Incumbency + Ted Cruz Endorsement = millions, evidently (at least in judicial races).
Now I’m going to post this just to get myself to stop playing with those figures…
I’ve been going through Wendy Davis’ finance report. I hope to report some interesting tidbits, but the Statesmanbeat me to the punch on one of the most interesting, reporting Davis received a hefty (raises pinky) one million dollars from a doctor Carolyn Oliver.
I’m sure liberals who complaining about the corrupting influence of money in politics will be asking her to give that back any minute now.
(Checks watch)
Any minute now…
In the meantime, here’s the Washington Post and Will Franklin on why Wendy Davis’ fundraising numbers are considerably less impressive than they seem to be.
I’m pretty confident that Ted Cruz will win the election (and deservedly so). The only question now is: By how much?
To determine that, let’s look at the recent history of non-Presidential top-of-the-ballot races in Texas:
2000 Senate: Kay Bailey Hutchison 4,078,954 (65%) over Gene Kelly 2,025,024 (32%)
2002 Senate: John Cornyn 2,480,991 (55%) over Ron Kirk 1,946,681 (43%)
2002 Governor: Rick Perry 2,617,106 (58%) over Tony Sanchez 1,809,915 (40%)
2006 Senate: Kay Bailey Hutchison 2,661,789 (62%) over Barbara Ann Radnofsky 1,555,202 (36%)
2008 Senate: John Cornyn 4,326,639 (55%) over Rick Noriega 3,383,890 (43%)
2010 Governor: Rick Perry 2,733,784 (55%) over Bill White 2,102,606 (42%)
(I’m throwing out the 4-way 2006 gubernatorial race as not germane. All numbers via Wikipdia, % rounded.)
In terms of financial resources, Sadler’s fundraising has been very poor, having raised just over $800,000; poorer even than Rick Noriega, who managed to raise over $4 million, or Barbara Ann Radnofsky, who raised about $1.5 million. Then again, money isn’t everything: Tony Sanchez spent $60 million of his own money to garner a meager 40% against Rick Perry in 2002.
I don’t think Sadler will do as poorly as vanity candidate Gene Kelly did in 2000. I expect Obama to run 4-5 points worse than he did in 2008, and I expect Sadler to probably lose a point or two off Obama’s total. So, I predict: Ted Cruz gets 61% of the vote, and Paul Sadler gets around 39%.
I expect Ted Cruz to beat Paul Sadler handily (and here’s my endorsement of Cruz). Later today I hope to have a prediction up on just how well I expect him to do.
Sadler finally buys some ads a week before the election. Note how Robert T. Garrett references the previous item, but doesn’t have the decency to link to it.
I was going to have an insightful, data-filed post on the Texas 23rd Congressional district race, but then I realized that the Los Angeles Times data I was relying on flipped at least one bit of information (NRA-ILA is doing independent expenditures against Pete Gallego, not against Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco), which means I can’t trust the rest. Super executive summary: Canseco has a huge cash on-hand advantage, $785,623 to $23,250, but assuming the other LA Times numbers are right, the independent expenditure race is a lot closer to even.
Now on to a LinkSwarm a week before the election:
Obama is clearly winning the race for military endorsements, having 6 endorsements to Romney’s paltry 359.
Given that Miklosi has raised about half of what his Republican opponent incumbent Mike Coffman has for the Colorado Sixth Congressional District race, but only has about one-fifth the cash on hand, Livoti seems to have retained his magic touch.
Barring any catastrophic event, Ted Cruz is going to be the next Senator from Texas, but the campaign keeps on chugging along. The official fundraising forms from the FEC aren’t up yet, but the two campaigns have announced the totals raised.
I can’t find any mention of Paul Sadler’s fundraising numbers on his press release page, but according to the Houston Chronicle, Sadler raised “about $358,734” in Q3. In truth, that’s a bit more than I expected him to raise, given that he has about as much hope of being elected Senator than the Cleveland Browns do of winning the 2013 Superbowl.
The Senate race runoff is barreling down the track toward us, so there’s a lot of race news this week:
New poll has Dewhurst down by 10 points. One caveat is that I haven’t heard of Political Gravity before, so I have no way to evaluate their robopolling methodology.
Cruz beat Dewhurst in fundraising from the first 11 days of July, pulling in $522,600 while Dewhurst brought in $160,400.
Cruz has 15 times as much cash on hand as Dewhurst. Then again, Dewhurst could always write himself a check, and maybe he’s prepaid for more deceptive attack ads.
But if so, why is Dewhurst having a fundraiser with Governor Rick Perry on election eve? I would think you would want to be doing your last big campaign push then…
This article suggests that Cruz has actually been spending more than Dewhurst, but I’m not sure that’s right. And has Dewhurst really only donated a paltry $22,147 to his own campaign? Maybe, since he’s loaned it millions, but that number still seems strangely low (but I don’t have time to go digging through his FEC reports right now).
Joe Holley says Cruz won Tuesday’s debate. “A debate, whatever the format, is just not Dewhurst’s forte, as he himself pretty much admitted Tuesday night, and he went on to prove it. He looked uncomfortable, often stumbled, and at times found himself on the defensive. It was not a good night for him.”