A closer look at Mayoral campaign finances

I said I’d get to a closer look at the Mayoral campaign finance reports later, after I had a chance to read all the way through them. That time is now, so let’s have our look.

Mayor Parker’s finance report.

The Mayor’s report clocks in at 701 pages, with more than 500 of those pages documenting contributions. That’s a lot of donors – over 2000 of them – and quite a few of them were recognizable names. Here are a few of the notable donors that I spotted.

Name             Amount   Notes
======================================================
Amber Mostyn     $5,000   Major Dem donor
Anna Eastman     $  100   HISD Trustee 
Ben Barnes       $1,000   Former Lt Gov
Billy Briscoe    $  250   2010 Treasurer candidate 
Brian Cweren     $  250   Former District C candidate
Brock Wagner     $  100   St Arnold CEO
Christina Bryan  $  250   2010 judicial candidate
Drayton McLane   $5,000   Former Astros owner
CM Ed Gonzalez   $  500   District H
CM Ellen Cohen   $  100   District C
Franci Crane     $5,000   Wife of current Astros owner
Gracie Saenz     $  350   Former CM
Jim Crane        $5,000   Astros owner
Janice McNair    $5,000   wife of Texans owner
Janiece Longoria $5,000   Port Commissioner
Jenifer Pool     $  157   At Large #3 candidate
Jim Adler        $1,000   The Tough Smart Lawyer
Juliet Stipeche  $  100   HISD Trustee 
Kent Friedman    $1,000   Sports Authority
Laura Spanjian   $  200   Sustainability Director
Michael Skelly   $1,057   Parks By You board member
Nancy Kinder     $5,000   Philanthropist
Peggy Hamric     $  350   Former HD126 Rep
Peter Brown      $5,000   Former CM
Phoebe Tudor     $5,000   Philanthropist
Reagan Flowers   $  250   Former HCDE candidate
Rich Kinder      $5,000   Energy executive
Robert McNair    $5,000   Texans owner
Rusty Hardin     $5,000   Defense attorney
Steve Mostyn     $5,000   Major Dem donor
Steven Kirkland  $3,000   Former District Court Judge

There are some other names I could have included on that list, but you get the idea. There were two other names I noticed that made me do a double-take. One was a former girlfriend of mine, the last woman I dated seriously before I met Tiffany. I haven’t seen or heard tell of her in years, and I had no idea she had any interest in politics, let alone this race. The other was a fellow named Edward Snowdon, who is not this Edward Snowden, since among other things they spell their surnames differently. It did send me scrambling to Google to verify that.

You may notice a couple of donations that end with $57. There were many more such examples in the Mayor’s report. That puzzled me at first, till I remembered that the Mayor turned 57 this year, and that there had been a birthday-themed fundraiser for her awhile back, at which amounts like $57 and $157 were suggested contributions.

Parker also took in a ton of PAC money, about $360K worth according to my added-in-my-head count. She drew a fair amount of state and national money, from the likes of the Victory Fund, Annie’s List, and EMILY’s List, in addition to the usual suspects.

Ben Hall, whose S-PAC report I finally found – I hadn’t realized that my search was only including personal reports – also had some notable donors:

Name             Amount        Notes
======================================================================
May Walker            $1,300   Constable 
Paul Kubosh           $2,500   Brother of AL3 candidate Michael Kubosh
Carolyn Evans-Shabazz $  100   At Large #2 candidate
Howard Jefferson      $2,850   HCDE Trustee
Laurie Robinson       $1,000   Former At Large #5 candidate
Reagan Flowers        $  250   Former HCDE candidate
Christina Bryan       $  250   2010 judicial candidate
Olan Boudreaux        $1,000   2010 judicial candidate
Reggie McKamie        $1,000   Former DA candidate
Carol Galloway        $  100   Former CM and HISD Trustee
Davetta Daniels       $   50   Former HISD Trustee candidate
US Rep. Al Green      $5,000   CD09
Dikembe Mutombo       $1,000   Former Houston Rocket
William Lawson        $3,000   Pastor
Levi Benton           $1,000   Former District Court judge

Any friend of Dikembe Mutombo is someone to reckon with, if you ask me. Christina Bryan and Reagan Flowers are the only people I saw that appeared on both lists, though I can’t swear to that. After scrolling through however many hundreds of pages of this stuff, the mind tends to soften. Hall had only two PAC contributions that I saw, from CWA COPE for $7,500 and from the HPFFA for the max of $10,000. He also took in $31,700 from law firms and other businesses, including a $5,000 in kind donation for office space.

Now for expenses. I’m going to break this down into a few general categories and do comparisons where reasonable. Note that Hall has a second finance report for expenses made from personal funds, from which I will also draw for this post. First up is consulting expenses.

Annise Parker

Amount                         Consultant                        Notes
======================================================================
$62,500        Storefront Political Media           General consulting
$48,000                        Keith Wade           General consulting
$43,751                     Lake Research                      Polling
$38,500                     James Cardona       Fundraising consulting
$33,000                            KChace       Fundraising consulting
$27,000                  Stuart Rosenberg                       Salary
$26,650                         Sue Davis         Media Communications
$23,000        Storefront Political Media            Campaign research
$10,800              Lone Star Strategies        Compliance consulting


Ben Hall

Amount                         Consultant                        Notes
======================================================================
$68,000                 Strong Strategies       Fundraising consulting
$34,000                 The Yates Company    Voter outreach consulting
$25,142                   Dee Ann Thigpen       Communication services
$17,500                    Damon Williams    Voter outreach consulting
$12,500                 The Yates Company          Consulting services
$10,000       Advantage Comm. Consultants   Media & community outreach
$ 6,000                The Imprint Agency      Social media consulting
$ 7,500                   Najvar Law Firm        Compliance consulting
$ 4,500                      Sharon Davis    Voter outreach consulting
$ 3,100                      Darcy Mackey        Volunteer coordinator

This doesn’t cover everything for each campaign. Parker had numerous other people on salary, and all of them, including Rosenberg, also received a monthly “cell and medical” stipend. Other than Rosenberg, all the names on her list are people and firms that have been with her since at least 2009. Among Hall’s consultants, Williams, Davis, and Mackey also were paid wages, as were some other folks. The thing that really stands out to me is that Hall spent about as much as Parker did on fundraising, but took in about one seventh as much as she did. I will also note that there are some Republican names among those listed above. Jerad Najvar, whom I’ve mentioned here a couple of times for his good work getting the Texas Ethics Commission to permit campaign contributions via text messaging, is a Republican. Jeff Yates of The Yates Company is a former Executive Director of the Harris County GOP; I actually couldn’t find anything on Google about The Yates Company but was informed about Jeff Yates’ Republican connections some time ago by other folks who knew him. Deeann Thigpen worked for Rep. Ted Poe for six years as his press secretary. Make of all that what you will. Also of interest is that Parker spent money on polling and “campaign research”, which I’m pretty sure is the polite term for “opposition research”, while Hall as far as I can tell did not.

Now let’s look at communications in its various forms.

Annise Parker

Amount                              Payee                        Notes
======================================================================
$42,430        Storefront Political Media                Newspaper ads
$14,086        Storefront Political Media           Online advertising
$10,000            Teleroots Technologies                   Phone bank
$ 8,787        Storefront Political Media                  Direct mail
$ 7,387        Storefront Political Media             Campaign letters
$ 7,000                 Que Onda Magazine                Advertisement
$ 6,543        Storefront Political Media   Letterhead, envelopes, etc
$ 5,898        Storefront Political Media  Banners, stickers, misc lit
$ 3,475         Rindy Miller & Associates                   Production
$ 2,735        Storefront Political Media                  Photography
$ 2,200        Storefront Political Media               Website design
$ 1,022        Storefront Political Media                    Postcards

No, I don’t know what the difference between “direct mail” and “campaign letters” is. And wow, that’s a lot of money on newspaper ads. It was three separate entries for $14,143 and change each. I did not see any money for signs, but I suspect those are covered in the January report. I haven’t gone looking for it, because one 700 page report is enough. Rindy Miller did all of Parker’s buying of TV ad time in 2009, and producing her TV ads. I presume from this she doesn’t have much of that in the works just yet.

Ben Hall

Amount                         Consultant                        Notes
======================================================================
$99,450   New Stream Marketing Strategies         Voter ID phone calls
$50,000                 KMJQ-FM Radio One            Radio advertising
$40,000  Talaferry Media Group dba D-Mars           Online advertising
$28,105                    Sprint 2 Print                   Yard signs
$20,000                      1230 AM KCOH            Radio advertising
$13,000                      1230 AM KCOH           Studio sponsorship
$11,735               Neumann and Company                   Push cards
$10,600       Advantage Comm. Consultants                    Print Ads
$ 5,417                       ShakeFX LLC                      Website
$ 5,000                        Nebo Media             Radio production
$ 5,000    African American News & Issues                  Advertising
$ 4,000  Talaferry Media Group dba D-Mars               Campaign signs
$ 3,342  Talaferry Media Group dba D-Mars                  Advertising
$ 2,930  Talaferry Media Group dba D-Mars                   Push cards
$ 2,819                    Sprint 2 Print    Signs and bumper stickers
$ 2,250  Talaferry Media Group dba D-Mars     T-shirts and advertising
$ 2,000           Giant Video Productions            Video productions
$ 1,500          Stylist Profile Magazine                Advertisement
$ 1,315  Talaferry Media Group dba D-Mars      T-shirts and push cards

Quite the kitchen sink approach here, and no I have no idea what “Voter ID phone calls” means, or why it’s so much more expensive than a phone bank. I do know that New Stream Marketing Strategies did marketing/advertising work for Rick Santorum in 2012. $70K on radio ads is a lot. It’s about what Gene Locke reported spending on radio ads in his 8 day report in 2009. Locke’s report didn’t specify stations, however, so he may have been making a broader buy. I will add that Hall also spent roughly $25K on “sign distribution”, so if you see a lot of his signs out there, know that someone got paid to deliver them. I consolidated four different payments to Neumann and Co for push cards, so I want to point out that Hall spent money on Spanish and Chinese language push cards, which strikes me as a good idea.

And finally, some other miscellaneous expenses. Mayor Parker’s campaign spent $760 in copy costs at FexEx Kinko’s. I wouldn’t normally bother with something as minor as that, except that I saw an entry on Hall’s report that said they paid $2,400 to Advanced Business Copiers for copier rental. Someone’s going to have to explain that one to me.

Hall spent $20,485 at Tony Mandola’s for his announcement event, and $20,000 at Ranchero King Buffet for another event. Good times.

Mayor Parker’s campaign remitted $11,390 to Merchant Bank for credit card donation fees, and $38,676 to the US Treasury for payroll taxes. Other campaigns that have salaried workers pay such taxes as well, but that’s more than average. The credit card fees seem rather high as well, but I’d have to go back and review other reports to get a handle on that.

One last thing to mention is that $40K that Hall spent on online advertising, which sure seems like a lot of money. Texpatriate takes a closer look at how that money was spent and what effect it had.

Ben Hall

I would like to tell this story, from the start, because it is quite entertaining. Imagine Annise Parker’s campaign team held a meeting to come up with the absolute worst-case scenario that could arise out of Hall advertising on Facebook. That might as well be what happened, considering how badly Dr Hall’s campaign messed up (again, to use polite words).

First, Dr Hall’s campaign had a pathetically lackluster showing in the Social Media races. While Parker had other 50k Facebook likes and 15k Twitter followers, Hall had about 2k likes and 200 followers. At one point, I was keeping track of the race between them, but I eventually quit because it was not anywhere near competitive.

Eventually, the Hall campaign decided (quite rightly so) that a Social Media presence would be invaluable in a 21st Century campaign. The campaign then invested thousands of dollars into online advertisements, specifically on Facebook and Twitter. Now, the way these sorts of advertisements work is that you come up with some buzz words and select a general geographical location. I have no knowledge of how the Hall campaign answered these questions, but based upon the results, I have an inkling as to what they answered.

Most likely, the buzz words “fed up” or “morass” or “angry” were used. This would have been done, ostensibly, in an attempt to attract all those healthy dissidents who respectfully oppose Mayor Parker’s administration. Instead, the buzz words tended to match up nicely with those who support armed insurrections and the like. Additionally, instead of focusing on Houstonians, the ads targeted individuals from throughout the State.

The result was a sorry collection of Rednecks, Klansmen, Neo-Nazis and McVeigh sympathizers who found their ways to the Ben Hall campaign’s Facebook page. This ended up causing, again, an unmitigated disaster. Ben Hall’s Facebook likes rose from about 2k to 5.7k, causing nearly 2/3 of the supporters to be astroturfed non-Houstonians.

Yikes. Here’s Hall’s Facebook page, and a brief scan of it will show examples of what Texpate is talking about. Texpate has some screenshots as well. One’s campaign Facebook page and Twitter feed is always going to attract some snarky commentary from your opposition if you’re doing it right, but this is something else altogether. Let it serve as a cautionary tale about buying a social media presence instead of building one organically.

Related Posts:

• Mayoral finance reports: Out of town cash and max donors
• January campaign finance reports – Mayoral wannabes
• KHOU polls the Mayor’s race