National Journal is reporting that Ricardo Sanchez raised a disasterous $83,000 in Q3. He also spent over $112,000 for the quarter and finished with $119,000 in the bank.
Digging into his Q3 FEC report makes his quarter seem, if anything, even worse. I get a total of 108 individual donations for the period, or an average of only slightly more than one a day. You should be able to get more than that by having a guy with a sandwich board standing next to a campaign table down in Hemisfair Park. I count only $25,249.26 in out-of-state donations, which is pretty sad for the DNC’s hand-picked candidate. And only four of those were max donations; a serious Democratic candidate should be able to get twice that many just from a single luncheon with trial lawyers. And a Melanie Gray of Houston sent in $4,600, which is over the FEC $2,500 limit.
Let’s look at some of his largest disbursements:
$51,625.30 to D.C.-based Hilltop Public Solutions for campaign management. As an outside observer, I have to ask: What campaign? Some of the principals seem to have worked on John Edwards 2004 Presidential campaign, which is not one I would chose for a model.
$27,265.19 to Taylor Collective Solutions, which I’ve mentioned before, for fundraising. Judging from the evidence, I don’t think he’s getting good value for his money.
$16,000 for “fundraising” to a Joe Livoti, who lists his position on LinkedIn as “Finance Director Gen. Ricardo Sanchez for Senate.” Oddly for a Texas senate candidate, Mr. Livoti works out of New York. Mr. Livoti does not seem to have been overly successful at his fundraising duties.
Lots of airfare and hotel charges; a puzzling amount, given how few public appearances he made during the period. Given how little he’s taking in, maybe he should consider driving rather than flying, at least for in-state fundraisers, and staying with supporters rather than sleeping in hotels.
$1,000 to Sparkpoint Strategies. From their website: “Sparkpoint is an online community mobilization tool that allows you to easily organize, inform and engage your supporters by offering them a private-branded platform to voice their opinions, stay informed and take immediate action to further your progressive cause.” Given that today the Sanchez campaign has 681 Facebook friends, 96 Twitter followers (for one tweet), and 9 followers for an empty YouTube page, his expenditures in the social media arena have not resulted in any notable gains in the social media venues we can actually track.
There are an awful lot of checks to First Bank San Antonio for “Merchant Services.” I get a total of $4,586.95. Unless his bank charges some steep credit card fees, it’s hard to figure out what those charges were for. Unless those were for cashier’s checks, in which case they’re probably not properly accounted for expenses under FEC rules.
So we have a candidate picked by the Democratic establishment, a campaign run out of D.C. and New York, that none the less doesn’t seem to be pulling in Democratic establishment money.
Just what has the Ricardo Sanchez campaign been doing the last three months? (Besides scrubbing any mention of tax cuts from his campaign website.) He hasn’t been raising money. He hasn’t been making campaign appearances. He hasn’t been tweeting. He hasn’t been generating any notable buzz.
All this is good news for whoever wins the Republican nomination, but if I were a Texas Democrat, I’d feel insulted. The DNC has foisted a Potemkin Candidate on you, one who shows no signs of being willing to run a serious, energetic campaign. More than ever, Sanchez looks vulnerable to a serious challenge from the left. But so far it doesn’t look like there’s a single Democrat in the state of Texas up to that challenge.