July 2023 campaign finance reports: City of Houston, part 4

Previously:
Congress
SD15
City of Houston, part 1
Harris County
City of Houston, part 2
City of Houston, part 3

January finance reports for city of Houston candidates are here. This post will look at the Controller candidates. I’ll have one more of these to present, to give you various other reports of interest.

Name             Raised      Spent    Loans    On Hand
======================================================
Hollins         540,712    946,692        0    639,806
Nobles           64,458     30,975   50,000     94,246
Martin            1,850      7,375        0    152,495
Sanchez

As a reminder, the Erik Manning spreadsheet has your candidate listings. All of the files I’ve reviewed can be found in this Google folder.

This one is short and sweet, with four candidates but only three reports. Chris Hollins is the big dog, thanks to the fundraising he did from his Mayoral campaign. I assume he’ll continue to pass the hat around, but in the meantime if I were him I’d be shooting TV ads to blanket the airwaves with. Start with a simple “Hi, I’m Chris Hollins, you may remember me from bringing you drive-through voting in the 2020 election when we were all trying not to catch COVID. Now I’m running for City Controller and I promise to do the same great job bringing you transparency to the city’s finances. Vote for me, Chris Hollins, for City Controller.” I mean, any questions?

As for Shannan Nobles and Dave Martin, who have some money but won’t have the kind of money to compete with that, I’d remind everyone I spoke to that unlike some candidates, I was in the Controller’s race from the jump, and I have experience with the city’s finances and won’t have to learn the job on the job. You’ll have to do a lot of talking because in person and door-to-door campaigning just doesn’t have the same reach, but radio and cable and mailers are an option for you. You’re hoping to make it to an runoff, that’s the goal. Anything can happen in a runoff.

And then there’s Orlando Sanchez, who didn’t file a report, possibly because he wasn’t in the race before July 1. You are either the type of person who votes for Orlando Sanchez even though there are other choices available, or you are not. You already know this about yourself, and you don’t need anyone else telling you anything about the race to know it. Just show up and ask yourself “Is Orlando Sanchez on the ballot?”, and go from there. Shannan Nobles and Dave Martin need to get more votes than that.

Next up are outgoing incumbents, some former candidates, and a couple of PACs. After that I’ll look at the HISD and HCC races, and then we’re done for the July reporting cycle.

Related Posts:

• 30 day 2023 campaign finance reports – Houston City Controller
• Kubosh drops out of Controller’s race
• Precinct analysis: 2023 Controller’s race