I don’t often go to the 8-day finance reports, mostly because there’s too little time to squeeze everything in, but HISD is the main story this year, so let’s have a look. The 30-day report summaries can be found here, and the July reports are here.
Elizabeth Santos, District I
Janette Garza Lindner, District I
Matias Kopinsky, District I
Sue Deigaard, District V
Maria Benzon, District V
Caroline Walter, District V
Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca, District VI
Kendall Baker, District VI
Greg Degeyter, District VI
Anne Sung, District VII
Bridget Wade, District VII
Dwight Jefferson, District VII
Mac Walker, District VII
Myrna Guidry, District IX
Gerry Monroe, District IX
Joshua Rosales, District IX
Dist Candidate Raised Spent Loan On Hand
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I Santos 16,677 25,640 0 6,565
I Lindner 29,530 46,115 0 44,217
I Kopinsky 4,225 6,087 0 2,523
V Deigaard 20,560 14,077 0 47,097
V Benzon 3,161 2,587 0 5,344
V Walter 2,050 9,953 0 633
VI Vilaseca 13,345 40,716 0 39,403
VI Baker 5,150 1,553 0 1,765
VI Degeyter 1,616 5,688 5,781 212
VII Sung 21,872 58,920 0 3,358
VII Wade 36,256 110,643 7,000 89,071
VII Jefferson 9,200 9,080 0 119
VII Walker
IX Guidry 5,555 5,550 7,500 5,000
IX Monroe 11,406 1,247 0 10,159
IX Rosales 6,150 7,975 2,177 352
All of the finance reports for each candidate can be found here. There was not an 8-day report listed for Mac Walker, so the link for him is to his 30-day report.
The 8-day is generally where you start to see more money being spent than raised. There’s less time to raise it – barely three weeks since the previous report – and now is the time to send mail, do robocalls, run ads, pay canvassers if that’s your thing, and so forth.
I’m not surprised that Bridget Wade is the top spender here, given that she was the big fundraiser from the jump. She has TV ads running – I saw one during “Monday Night Football” this week. Not necessarily the best use of campaign money, given that plenty of people who are not in District VII (such as myself) will see the ad, and not all of those who are in District VII will make the connection, but the first job of any campaign is to make sure people know there’s an election and that this candidate is running in it. A TV ad checks those boxes, and as a bonus you may get other people to talk about it. Mission accomplished. Her report shows $50K for a cable TV buy, plus another $10K for radio. Anne Sung has put the bulk of her spending – over $46K – into mail, plus $3K for digital ads.
Here in District I, I’ve gotten a ton of mail from both the Santos and Garza Lindner campaigns; I’ve also been stalked on the web by Santos online ads. The Santos campaign has had canvassers out in the neighborhood – we got door-knocked on Wednesday – which led Campos (who consults for the Garza Lindner campaign) to grouse about PAC money being spent, in this race and in others, with little disclosure about how the funds are being spent and who it is that is doing the spending. This is the report he’s talking about – the PAC in question is Patriot Majority Texas, funded by the American Federation of Teachers, and in support of trustees Santos, Vilseca, and Sung. Indeed, it does not tell you much. Sung is getting more than Santos – given her opponent, Sung needs all the help she can get – with Vilaseca getting considerably less. Make of it what you will.
Both Gerry Monroe ($10K) and Dwight Jefferson ($17K) had outstanding loan totals listed for their 30 day reports. Neither reported any such total on the 8 day report, and I don’t see how either of them could have been paid off. The omission is probably an oversight on their part. Finance reports are weird, man.
Not much else to say. What campaign activity have you observed in your district?