Eight day campaign finance reports were posted on the city website on Monday and Tuesday. As of today, the following candidates do not have an 8 Day report available: Amanda Ullman, Mayor James Partsch-Galvan (*), At Large #1 Elizabeth Perez, At Large #2 Rozzy Shorter, At Large #2 Gordon Goss, At Large #2 Brad Batteau, [...]
Posts Tagged ‘campaign finance reports’
Eight day finance reports, part II
Finishing what I started… – Fernando Herrera‘s report appeared on Tuesday. He raised $15,835, spent $27,185, and has $242.87 on hand. There were several expenditures on signs and a couple for “Advertising” that didn’t give me much of a clue about what kind of advertising they may be – there were two items totaling $4060 [...]
Eight day reports, part 1
The eight day finance reports started getting posted on the city’s campaign finance page yesterday. I’m still working through putting them on my 2011 Election page, but here are a few highlights so far: – Next to Mayor Parker, the big spender in October was CM Stephen Costello, who made full use of his deep [...]
Two finance report updates
Since I’ve made a big deal out of who hasn’t filed their 30 Day campaign finance reports, I am compelled to note that as of October 27, Scott Boates in At Large #1 has now filed his. Eight day reports are due tomorrow, and the last 30 Day reports before this one were filed on [...]
Where are the 30 day reports?
On October 11, the vast majority of 30 Day campaign finance reports were posted on the city’s website. Since then, only two new reports (not counting corrected reports) have been posted, with quite a few candidates not filing them at all. These are the candidates that do not have a 30 Day report posted on [...]
More 30 day finance reports for City of Houston races
Following up on yesterday’s report, here are the interesting, odd, and questionable things I’ve seen in the rest of the 30 day campaign finance reports. Mayor Parker raised $469K, spent $526K, and maintained $2.3 million on hand. She appears to be gearing up to start airing ads – I saw two expenditures totaling nearly $49K [...]
30 day finance reports for City of Houston races
The 30 day campaign finance reports for City of Houston elections were due last week, and they are now mostly up on the city’s campaign finance report website, with a large number showing up today. Already I’m seeing questionable, curious, and interesting things in the reports. Some highlights so far: Helena Brown, the late-filing candidate [...]
Texas Watchdog followup on HCC reports
So after I published those HCC Trustee campaign finance reports, I got an email from Jennifer Peebles of Texas Watchdog, who asked me if I had redacted the files to hide the mailing addresses of the trustees and their donors. I said no, I had uploaded exactly what they gave me. Turns out they should [...]
At long last, HCC campaign finance statements
As you know, I had sent an Open Records request to the HCC General Counsel to get copies of July campaign finance reports for all HCC Trustees and candidates. I sent that in on August 10, and the reply I got said I would have a reply within 10 business days. Sure enough, exactly two [...]
Mayor Parker campaign finance data
As you know, in my analyses of the campaign finance reports for July, I skipped over Mayor Parker’s report because it was just too damn big for me to plow through. Well, Sue Davis of the Mayor’s campaign heard my incessant whining plaintive cries, and sent me an Excel spreadsheet version of the Mayor’s report, [...]
A closer look at finance reports: Contributions, donations, and memberships
When you give money to a political candidate, you’re not just paying for their overhead and campaign-related expenses. You’re also helping to support the causes and candidates that they support. This last post in my series on campaign finance reports is a look at this kind of spending by candidates. First, we have things like [...]
Boney to run for HCC Trustee
We have our first contested race for a non-city of Houston office as former Council member and Mayor Pro Tem Jew Don Boney has announced his candidacy for the HCC Trustee District IV seat. You can see his press release here. This is the seat currently held by Michael P. Williams, who is as far [...]
A closer look at finance reports: Spending on consultants
Now that we’ve looked at who gives to candidates in Houston, let’s take a look at what those candidates spend their money on. Broadly speaking, your main forms of expenditures include overhead (rent, food, office supplies, transportation, webhosting, etc), advertising, field work, outreach, and professional services. It’s the latter that I’ll be examining today. By [...]
A closer look at finance reports: Elected officials
In addition to contributions from PACs, there was another class of donor that I thought was worth highlighting: Elected officials and candidates for public office. Basically, the idea is to see who “the establishment” is supporting, to see what we might learn from that. So without further ado, here’s a Google spreadsheet with all the [...]
A closer look at finance reports: PACs
Having taken the time to download all of those campaign finance reports for the city of Houston elections, which you can view on my 2011 Election page, I wanted to see what I could learn from all this data. So I spent a little time going through all the reports to sort contributions and expenditures [...]
Update on HISD and HCC finance reports
I had mentioned before that it was hard to find campaign finance reports for HISD and HCC Trustees. I now have some updated information about this, so I wanted to share it with you. First, HISD Trustee Anna Eastman (who represents my HISD district) emailed me on Tuesday to let me know that their finance [...]
The non-filers
We are now more than a week beyond the deadline to file campaign finance reports for City of Houston elections. The following candidates for city office have not yet filed a campaign finance report for July: Michael Williams, At Large #2 Griff Griffin, At Large #2 Joe Edmonds, At Large #5 Kenneth Perkins, District B [...]
Poor Jerry
I feel so, so sorry for him. Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole has racked up $1.1 million in legal bills fighting a federal corruption probe in the past two years, nearly exhausting his campaign funds months before his case is to be retried. Campaign finance reports show Eversole has $51,000 left in the bank after [...]
The other races
In addition to the city of Houston races, I am trying to follow the HISD and HCC Trustee elections as well. I say “trying” because there’s just no information out there that I can find. For one thing, though there are seven such races this year – four in HISD, three in HCC, including one [...]
Tuesday late filers report
This is a semi-regular tracker of late campaign finance report filings for City of Houston elections. I’ll keep this up until either everyone has filed, or we all get sick of it and I move onto other trivial obsessions. With that said, here are today’s contestants: 1. Andrew Burks, District D. Burks actually filed his [...]
Finance reports and the Mayor’s race
Finance report updates: David Robinson has filed his corrected report, which includes the $53,095.57 cash on hand total that was omitted in the original. There were no other changes made. Mayoral candidate Kevin Simms has now filed his report. He lists $4,033.83 in contributions, $2,873.79 in expenses, and $1,160.04 on hand. Interestingly, he also lists [...]
More campaign finance reports for July
Following up on the earlier post, here are some more highlights from the July campaign finance reports for City of Houston elections. All reports can be found on my 2011 Election page. – Since I dinged Al Hoang for not filing a January report, I will state up front that his July report is on [...]
Some early fundraising numbers
Today is the day that campaign finance reports are due for candidates in this November’s city of Houston elections. Some early filer’s reports are already up on the city’s Campaign Finance webpage. I’ve uploaded copies of these reports to my 2011 Election page; January reports are already uploaded and linked there. I will add more [...]
Fundraising: SBOE
Really only two races of interest here, SBOE 5 and SBOE 10. Let’s take a look. http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/php/summary.php?rn=458837&form=COH Totals From Report For Rebecca L. Bell-Metereau Filed on: July 15 2010 Covering the Period February 21, 2010 Through June 30, 2010 Total Unitemized Contributions: $8,790.51 Total Political Contributions: $69,779.06 Total Unitemized Expenditures: $79.17 Total Expenditures: $29,172.85 Total [...]
January City of Houston campaign finance reports
In addition to state and federal officeholders/candidates, January 15 was also the deadline for City of Houston folks to file their campaign finance reports as well. As there are no elections coming up any time soon, I will not be going into obsessive levels of detail about them, but here are some highlights: – Annise [...]
HCAD rules for Hoang in homestead dispute
On Christmas Eve, the Chron reported that Council Member-Elect Al Hoang and his wife had claimed homestead exemptions on two separate houses, one in Houston and one in Pearland. Now the Harris County Appraisal District has verified Hoang’s explanation about the exemptions, saying that it was properly carried over from the previous owner. Hoang had [...]
Chron raises questions about Al Hoang’s residency and campaign finance reports
The main question I have is why is this story just being published now, on Christmas Eve, and not before either of the elections? Houston City Councilman-elect Al Hoang and his wife claimed homestead exemptions on two separate homes, according to public records that also raise questions about whether Hoang meets the city’s residency requirements. [...]
Improving campaign finance disclosure
This is a step in the right direction. The [Texas Ethics Commission] adopted new rules last week that, beginning this summer, will require anyone running for office to use 19 defined subject categories to describe any goods, services or other things of value purchased by their campaigns. In the past, these candidates chose vague terms [...]
Eight days out finance reports, At Large candidates
Continuing on with our look at the eight days out reports, here’s how things stack up for the At Large Council candidates in the runoffs. Candidate Raised Spent Loans Cash PAC $$ PAC % =============================================================== Derr 26,692 13,034 5,000 5,487 8,650 32.4 Costello 193,225 165,200 15,000 16,065 71,000 36.7 Candidate TV Radio Mail Phone Field [...]