Hey, it’s July, and you know what that means: Campaign finance reports! There aren’t many State Rep races of interest this November, but there are four that I wanted to look at.
HD134
Name Raised Spent Loans On Hand
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Davis 92,972 252,457 0 53,839
Rose 83,047 31,278 0 54,691
I don’t really expect HD134 to be particularly tight – it will never be “safe” in the sense that most districts are, but it also won’t be any closer than 55-45 barring anything odd. Which, to be fair, could happen this year. Ben Rose has been pretty active so far, and he raised a decent amount of money; his campaign sent out an email on Tuesday bragging that they are “currently in 1st place with more cash on hand than our incumbent opponent”, which is true enough but not perhaps the most accurate way of viewing things, given that Davis spent a bunch of money in a contested primary. If he gets to make the same boast after the 30 Day reports come out, I will be genuinely impressed. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if Rep. Davis retains the endorsement she received in 2014 from Equality Texas. She hasn’t done anything to forfeit it as far as I know, but unlike 2014 she has a viable opponent. We’ll see what happens.
HD144
Rep. Gilbert Pena
Mary Ann Perez
Name Raised Spent Loans On Hand
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Pena 14,920 15,932 0 13,643
Perez 38,304 37,814 0 48,362
Bear in mind here that Gilbert Pena is the incumbent, not the challenger. How an incumbent, even an accidental one like Pena, could have that little to show for two years in office is a good question, but perhaps the answer is that he’s a clear underdog, based on 2012 results. Mary Ann Perez, who lost to Pena in 2014 by a close margin, had to win a three-way primary and will likely have an incumbent-sized bank account by the time the next report is filed.
HD149
Name Raised Spent Loans On Hand
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Vo 34,763 44,541 45,119 56,071
Chu 27,668 42,732 46,475 17,593
As with Hd134, I don’t expect anything exciting here, but Republicans sometimes throw a bunch of money at Rep. Vo, and sometimes they find a self-funder to spare them the effort. Chu actually had a decent number of small-dollar donations, but in the end I doubt it will amount to much.
HD137
Name Raised Spent Loans On Hand
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Wu 42,851 35,928 45,000 124,611
Baker 20 23,424 0 20
This district is closer to safe than swing, but Rep. Wu’s opponent was one of the anti-HERO leaders, who ran for District F last year and finished third in a field of three. I was curious to see if any of Kendall Baker’s fellow HERO-haters would show him some love in this race, for old time’s sake if nothing else. I think you can guess what the answer to that is. Baker’s expenditures all came from personal funds, including $20K to Aubrey Taylor Communications for “Election related banners on blog posts thru 11/8/2016”. I’d always heard there was money to be made in blogging, I guess I was just too dumb to figure out how to do it. Maybe next election.
From a Republican perspective:
Sarah Davis should be safe. Rose has been much less visible than Ann Johnson was. Equality Texas would be wise to continue to support her, as one of few Republicans open to hearing from them and supporting good bills and killing bad ones.
Pena will get substantial state party support, but I don’t know any local activists who think he can be salvaged in a presidential year. He is just odd. Check his expenditures on his finance reports.
Brian Chu is a quality candidate, and the local party believes the Vietnamese community can be swayed to support him, although that is only a small part of that district. Still it is a tough district for the GOP.
Kendall Baker is an embarrassment, especially with his history of sexual harassment. He would be deluded to think that black Democrats will cross over and support him just because of his race. The folks who used him and other blacks as props at their press conferences during the anti-HERO campaign are unlikely to spend any of their money on such a losing cause.