It’s January, and you know what happens in January: Campaign finance reports get posted. This is a city of Houston election year, so first order of business is to look at the city of Houston finance reports. I’ve put all the candidate reports I could find from the city’s finance reporting site in this Google Drive folder, so they should all be visible. Now let’s look at the numbers:
Candidate Office Raised Spent Loan On Hand
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Turner Mayor 1,240,587 633,726 0 2,853,986
Buzbee Mayor 0 541,957 2,000,000 1,458,042
King Mayor 0 1,677 110,000 108,516
Stardig PAC A 16,204 22,507 0 112,005
Peck A 0 750 5,000 4,250
Davis B 20,700 13,976 0 153,846
Cohen C 12,155 17,533 0 51,885
Hellyar C 26,663 5,398 0 19,957
Nowak C 5,426 1,356 0 4,069
Kennedy C 10,355 20 0 10,331
Boykins D 14,680 89,412 0 22,829
Martin E 11,750 22,922 0 121,055
Le F 48,425 7,787 30,823 51,207
Travis G 49,250 21,020 21,000 86,307
Cisneros H 25,250 5,645 0 68,167
Gallegos I 46,525 22,944 0 102,335
Laster J 8,500 16,174 0 170,823
Castex-Tatum K 28,710 15,913 0 16,593
Knox AL1 32,975 15,352 0 87,083
Robinson AL2 58,850 17,126 0 205,926
Kubosh AL3 33,875 16,035 276,000 102,700
Edwards AL4 60,346 45,727 0 168,581
Christie AL5 7,513 27,448 0 5,983
Alcorn AL5 145,906 9,483 0 134,922
Boone AL5 0 0 0 0
Brown Controller 91,547 17,145 75,000 199,405
McNeese ? 0 0 0 0
Adriatico ? 5,300 1,186 5,000 10,350
All Houston Mayors raise a lot of money, and Sylvester Turner is no exception. He also has the distinct advantage of not having a blackout period, as previous Mayors and Council members had, so he has a running start on 2019. Tony Buzbee has already loaned himself $2 million. Well, technically, he contributed it to himself. I can’t remember if you’re allowed to do that, or if he mis-filed this as a contribution when it’s really a loan that he doesn’t necessarily intend to pay back. Whatever the case, expect that he will continue to self-finance. As for King, he hasn’t really gotten started yet. I’ll need to go back and review his finance reports from 2015, but I do know that he loaned himself $650K in that race, and wasn’t that big a fundraiser outside of that. He wasn’t bad, just not in Turner or Adrian Garcia or Steve Costello’s league. My guess is he writes himself another check, but I don’t know how much of one he cuts. He can’t outraise Turner and I don’t see him out-spending Buzbee. I’m not totally sure where that leaves him, but we’ll see.
The Council group can be sorted into three buckets: Term-limited incumbents, incumbents up for re-election, and non-incumbents. I’m going to save the first group for a separate post, as they have the bigger question of “what next” to ponder. The incumbents who are running for re-election are by and large all in pretty good financial shape. Martha Castex-Tatum has the least on hand, but she also ran in recent memory. Dwight Boykins can self-fund if he wants to. He spent the most by far, with the single biggest expense being $6K for a holiday party. Everyone else is about where I’d expect them to be. No incumbent had an opponent who was in position to file a finance report as of January. As noted before, Raj Salhotra has filed for At Large #1; I am aware of some people who are considering At Large #3 and District F. The July finance reports will tell us much more.
Three of the four-so-far contenders for District C have reports – Nick Hellyar, Bob Nowak, Shelley Kennedy; Abbie Kamin didn’t announce till January. It’s too early to tell who might have a leg up on the field. Amy Peck was just getting started in recent weeks in District A. Keep an eye on Sallie Alcorn in At Large #5, who posted big league numbers in this report. Fundraising isn’t destiny, but it does help to get your name out, especially in a citywide race. I’ve also been told that Laurie Robinson will not be running after all, so Alcorn has a big head start. Marvin McNeese and Nelvin Adriatico did not indicate what office they were seeking in their reports.
As for Controller, Chris Brown did the top two things to smooth his path – he raised decent money, and he avoided doing anything that generated negative press. I won’t be surprised if he gets at most token opposition.
I’ll have some thoughts about the outgoing incumbents tomorrow, and I’ll post about the HISD and HCC reports in the coming days. In the meantime, let me know what you think.
Nelvin Adriatico is running for District J
$5,000 from Adrian Garcia, and $5,000 loan, I guess Adrian is making a play for more power. We will see what happens, because in 2022 it will not be as easy for him to keep his seat.
Those amount are for Adriatico.
Erick could you tell us where Nelvin was living before he moved into the district. He did not vote last year in either the primary or general election.
Never mind he lives in Sugarland, Texas, it seems he has a homestead exemption for the house in which he resides.
If Adriatico doesn’t drop the homestead exemption on the Sugar Land house, we need to harass him without mercy for being a fake Houstonian. I fervently believe that a homestead exemption is prima facie evidence of your home address.