Previously:
Congress
SD15
City of Houston, part 1
Harris County
City of Houston, part 2
City of Houston, part 3
City of Houston, part 4
January finance reports for city of Houston candidates are here. This is at long last the end of the city of Houston finance reports. This post looks at the outgoing incumbents, the former candidates, and a couple of PACs of interest.
Name Raised Spent Loans On Hand
======================================================
Turner 23,207 110,223 0 760,761
Brown 0 4,624 75,000 24,691
Kubosh 45,350 60,607 161,815 48,724
Cisneros 0 1,577 0 29,551
Knox 1,200 6,480 0 8,468
Robinson 500 20,785 0 249,362
Edwards 187,710 982,396 0 245,769
GarzaLindner 5,010 9,464 0 0
Laster 0 1,254 0 147,138
HGAC Area PAC 94,697 102,972 0 18,808
ProtectServePAC 157,808 168,398 0 60,017
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.
For the outgoing incumbents, the main question is what will they do with their remaining cash. For most of them, I expect they’ll gradually spend it down – they have several years to disburse all those funds – and at some point will disappear from the system. Mike Laster, whose term ended in 2019, is the longest-lasting person on this list. As for Mayor Turner and CM David Robinson, one might reasonably wonder if they have another campaign for something else in them. I don’t think it will be anything in 2024 – and I swear, if I see one more article speculating about Mayor Turner running for US Senate next year I’ll scream – but it’s not out of the question. They wouldn’t have to resign at this point in their term in order to run. I don’t see it happening, but it’s not impossible.
Mike Knox is of course running for Sheriff next year. He hasn’t raised much money for it, and doesn’t have much to give from his existing account. He didn’t have much in his January report. I dunno, maybe this suggests his decision to run for Sheriff was a very recent one.
One way that a soon-to-be-former officeholder can dispense of unneeded campaign funds can be seen in Janette Garza Lindner’s report; she is now on the HISD Board of Managers and abandoned her campaign for District H when she was appointed. After paying her remaining expenses, the leftover cash was split into three equal donations, to Kids Meals, Inc; BARC Houston; and the United Way. Charitable or non-profit donations are allowed for campaign funds.
Amanda Edwards spent most of that total you see on refunds to donors to her Mayoral campaign. At least, that’s what it looked like to me. I assume the rest of that cash will go the same way – these things can take time. She’s doing fine without those prior donations.
The Houston-Galveston Area PAC was and is the campaign to put the Fair for Houston proposition on the ballot. I presume it will continue to exist to raise and spend money to get that passed as well. I’m not aware of any organized opposition at this time. We’ll see what the 30 day reports tell us.
The Protect and Serve PAC says it is in support of the John Whitmire campaign. You can draw your own conclusions from there.
That’s a wrap on the city campaign finance reports for July. Let me know what you think.