Finishing up with City Council candidates. Part One, for the other open seats, is here. July reports for F, J, and At Large #5 are here, and for At Large #4 are here. All of the finance reports that I have downloaded and reviewed are in this Google folder. Except for the reports that were filed non-electronically, which you can find here. Erik Manning’s invaluable spreadsheet remains my source for who’s in what race.
Candidate Raised Spent Loan On Hand
====================================================
Thomas 31,040 13,401 0 28,433
Huynh 21,600 20,599 9,500 0
G Nguyen 740 1,001 0 19,981
Nelson 2,385 3,100 0 1,678
Zamora 0 305 0 0
R Nguyen
Adriatico 27,606 25,393 22,000 19,129
Cuellar 21,300 14,297 0 36,069
Curtis 15,105 11,867 0 7,639
Pollard 13,051 30,277 20,000 17,226
Rodriguez 10,069 10,070 0 10,620
Galvan 200 695 0 200
Patterson
Baldwin 110,394 38,562 0 52,074
Hellyar 49,841 36,372 0 32,763
Dolcefino 15,355 9,002 0 7,112
Plummer 9,834 23,490 0 32,139
Hausman 5,845 8,654 0 2,098
Bastida 1,103 51 200 750
McCrutcheon 0 0 34,000 150
Joseph
Laney
Rowe
Gonzalez
Alcorn 71,421 66,284 0 258,320
Woods 9,791 7,624 0 0
McNeese 9,705 13,606 30,000 3,305
Flowers 8,015 12,471 2,987 2,157
Rivera 2,335 1,732 0 602
Dick 1,435 93,248 75,000 1,435
Bonton 200 10,005 20,000 20,000
Batteau 0 0 0 0
We know that fundraising is not destiny. Especially in races where no one raises enough money to really do effective outreach, other factors (which most definitely include random luck) will affect the outcome. Plus, not all fundraising hauls are equal. A large number of small donations beats a small number of large donations, as that indicates breadth of support, and while all candidates can and do tap their personal networks, donations from within the city or district are worth more than donations from people elsewhere. You get the idea.
With all that said, we can draw some broad if shallow conclusions here. Tiffany Thomas has been the strongest fundraising in F from the beginning. Van Huynh has done a good job since July – he entered too late to have a July report – but apparently doesn’t have any cash on hand. His report leaves that field blank, and that figure can get fuzzy when a candidate also writes his own check. As for Giang “John” Nguyen, he reported $20K raised in July with the absurd amount of $8 in expenditures. He apparently hasn’t spent much more, so despite not taking in anything significant he’s still got almost $20K in the bank. You know how baseball fans say that at any given game you’ll see something you’ve never seen before? Reviewing city election campaign finance reports is kind of like that.
District J looks pretty wide open. It’s rare to see a race where nearly everyone has at least raised some decent amount of money. I would not take any bets on who might make that runoff.
At Large #4 and #5 follow more familiar patterns. Bill Baldwin was a late entrant in #4 but has done well since then. I wouldn’t call that enough money to really get your name out citywide, but he has the potential to get there. He lives and has his office in my neighborhood so many people around here know him. I’ve seen a respectable number of Baldwin signs, and a couple of signs that say “Don’t vote for Bill Baldwin in At Large #4”, which amuses me. There are also signs for Tiko Hausman, who lives in the First Ward but has been a fixture in the PTAs at Travis and Hogg. Nick Hellyar and Letitia Plummer have gotten the lion’s share of the endorsements. Insert shrug emoji here.
Sallie Alcorn has dominated fundraising in At Large #5 from the jump, and she has the most endorsements. Ashton Woods has a few, and no one else has more than one. She’s in a similar position to Abbie Kamin in C – do you spend a bunch now to maximize your chances of getting into the runoff, or do you hold back and hope to overwhelm whoever your runoff opponent is, assuming you get there? I say fire your shot now and let tomorrow take care of itself, but there’s room for debate.
That’s it for the city elections. I will not have the capacity to review 8 day reports, but I’ll probably at least take a look at the Mayoral numbers. As always, I hope this has been helpful. I’ll have HISD and HCC reports up soon.
Has anyone done a google trend search of these candidates to see who is trending? The results are shocking.