The big ones for this cycle the Q4 2019 Congressional finance reports. For the last time, we have new candidates joining the list, and a couple of folks dropping out. Let’s do the thing and see where we are going into 2020. The January 2019 roundup is here, which closed out the 2017-18 election cycle, the April 2019 report is here, the July 2019 report is here, and the October 2020 report is here. For comparison, the October 2017 report is here. The FEC summary page for Congress is here and for the Senate is here.
MJ Hegar – Senate
Chris Bell – Senate
Amanda Edwards – Senate
Royce West – Senate
Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez – Senate
Sema Hernandez – Senate
Adrian Ocegueda – Senate
Michael Cooper – Senate
Jack Foster – Senate
Anne Garcia – Senate
John Love – Senate (did not file for the primary)
Lizzie Fletcher – CD07
Colin Allred – CD32
Henry Cuellar – CD28
Jessia Cisneros – CD28
Hank Gilbert – CD01
Elisa Cardnell – CD02
Travis Olsen – CD02
Sima Ladjevardian – CD02
Sean McCaffity – CD03
Tanner Do – CD03
Lulu Seikaly – CD03
Stephen Daniel – CD06
Elizabeth Hernandez – CD08
Laura Jones – CD08
Mike Siegel – CD10
Pritesh Gandhi – CD10
Shannon Hutcheson – CD10
Adrienne Bell – CD14
Rick Kennedy – CD17
William Foster – CD17
David Jaramillo – CD17
Jennie Lou Leeder – CD21
Wendy Davis – CD21
Sri Kulkarni – CD22
Nyanza Moore – CD22
Derrick Reed – CD22
Gina Ortiz Jones – CD23
Rosey Ramos Abuabara – CD23
Jaime Escuder – CD23
Ricardo Madrid – CD23
Efrain Valdez – CD23
Jan McDowell – CD24
Kim Olson – CD24
Candace Valenzuela – CD24
John Biggan – CD24
Richard Fleming – CD24
Sam Vega – CD24
Crystal Lee Fletcher – CD24 (suspended campaign)
Julie Oliver – CD25
Heidi Sloan – CD25
Carol Ianuzzi – CD26
Mat Pruneda – CD26
Christine Eady Mann – CD31
Dan Jangigian – CD31
Eric Hanke – CD31
Donna Imam – CD31
Michael Grimes – CD31
Tammy Young – CD31
Dist Name Raised Spent Loans On Hand
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Sen Hegar 3,225,842 2,269,671 0 1,003,653
Sen Bell 318,983 310,983 0 8,000
Sen Edwards 807,478 476,485 30,000 330,993
Sen West 956,593 430,887 202,162 525,706
Sen T-Ramirez 807,023 577,782 0 229,240
Sen Hernandez 7,551 7,295 0 3,891
Sen Ocegueda 5,773 5,273 5,600 500
Sen Cooper 4,716 2,598 41 -660
Sen Foster 6,957 5,604 0 1,353
Sen Garcia 10,000 6,058 22,844 3,941
Sen Love 31,533 27,610 0 3,922
07 Fletcher 2,339,444 544,518 0 1,836,992
32 Allred 2,370,113 555,774 0 1,917,783
28 Cuellar 1,530,976 1,140,095 0 2,935,884
28 Cisneros 982,031 366,588 0 615,442
01 Gilbert 107,625 21,733 50,000 85,891
02 Cardnell 284,514 193,910 0 90,603
02 Olsen 29,141 24,271 11,037 4,870
02 Ladjevardian 407,781 30,035 0 377,746
03 McCaffity 267,288 54,939 0 212,348
03 Do 17,815 17,523 0 291
03 Seikaly 109,870 43,518 3,000 66,351
06 Daniel 148,655 128,989 0 19,665
08 Hernandez
08 Jones 4,250 2,698 1,910 1,552
10 Siegel 451,917 303,847 10,000 151,560
10 Gandhi 786,107 335,354 0 450,752
10 Hutcheson 750,981 295,404 0 455,577
14 Bell 84,724 71,740 0 16,061
17 Kennedy 48,623 38,593 11,953 11,457
17 Foster
17 Jaramillo 14,280 163 0 14,116
21 Leeder 29,112 25,444 9,475 3,662
21 Davis 1,850,589 635,794 18,493 1,214,794
22 Kulkarni 1,149,783 515,958 0 661,592
22 Moore 142,528 141,373 38,526 1,154
22 Reed 142,458 104,196 0 38,261
23 Ortiz Jones 2,481,192 544,523 3,024 2,028,187
23 Abuabara
23 Escuder 8,454 2,985 0 926
23 Madrid
23 Valdez
24 McDowell 67,351 73,140 0 7,531
24 Olson 861,905 357,238 20,000 504,667
24 Valenzuela 333,007 191,231 33,956 141,776
24 Biggan 62,887 58,333 27,084 4,554
24 Fleming 16,813 16,414 300 398
24 Vega
24 Fletcher 122,427 35,099 823 87,327
25 Oliver 325,091 195,265 2,644 129,826
25 Sloan 136,461 54,257 0 82,204
26 Ianuzzi 72,607 56,912 42,195 15,695
26 Pruneda 30,117 15,546 16,000 16,935
31 Mann 170,759 126,616 0 45,580
31 Jangigian 36,127 27,383 14,681 8,743
31 Hanke 46,390 35,111 0 11,278
31 Imam 207,531 20,461 100,000 187,070
31 Grimes 15,300 0 0 15,300
31 Young 50,939 14,430 0 36,508
In the Senate primary, there’s MJ Hegar and there’s everyone else. Her totals above understate her lead in the money race, because VoteVets will be spending on her candidacy as well. I would have thought Royce West would have raised more, and I thought Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez might have done better as well, but here we are. I do think the eventual nominee will be able to raise plenty of money, and will likely get some national help as well. For sure, we know Hegar is on the DSCC’s list; whether that transfers to someone else if she falls short remains to be seen.
I’ve expressed some skepticism about Jessica Cisneros in her primary against incumbent Henry Cuellar, but she’s proven she can raise money – in fact, she outraised him for this quarter, though obviously Cuellar still has a big cash on hand advantage. I can’t say I’ve ever been enthusiastic about her candidacy – she seemed awfully green at the beginning, and as someone who had moved back to Laredo to run this race she didn’t strike me as the kind of candidate that could give him a serious challenge. But man, Cuellar is a jackass, and I’m sure that’s helped her in the fundraising department. He’s also now got some national money coming in, which suggests at least a little case of the nerves. This is the marquee race that’s not in Harris County for me, though I will reiterate what I said before about taking out Cuellar versus taking out Eddie Lucio.
Sima Ladjevardian made a big splash in CD02, and around the same time as her announcement of her Q4 haul the DCCC put CD02 on its target list, adding it to the six other seats (CDs 10, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 31) that were already there. I assume the two are related, though Elisa Cardnell keeps chugging along.
Even though there was a long history of Democratic challengers to Republican Congressmen not raising any money, we all got used to the idea of our candidates breaking records and putting up very impressive totals in 2018. Look at the January 2019 summary that I linked to above, which adds it up for the cycle. Even candidates in completely non-competitive districts were topping $100K, even $200K or more. So maybe some of the totals you see here have you a bit jaded, like “oh, sure, we can raise money now, we’re good at that now”. If that’s what you’re thinking – and I don’t blame you, I feel that way too – I invite you to look back at the January 2018 summary, which is the point in time from that cycle that we’re in now. Look in particular at CDs 03, 10, 22, and 24, where candidates this time around have in some cases done better by an order of magnitude than their counterparts – who in some cases were themselves – did two years ago. Look at Julie Oliver in CD25 – she hadn’t even cracked $20K at this point in 2018. We are in such a different world now.
I could go down the list and look at all the race, but you can see the totals. There are no surprises here, in the sense that the candidates you’d expect to do well are indeed doing very well. Only CD31 is underperforming, at least relative to the other districts, but Christine Mann has stepped it up a bit and Donna Imam is willing to throw some of her own money in the pot. With the DCCC jumping into CD02, we’ve already expanded the field, and with the numbers so far it will be easy to expand it further. If this all still feels a little weird to you, I get it. Things were the way they were for a long time. They’re not that way any more, and I for one am glad to adjust to that.
Kulkarni is the one that surprises me the most. I would have been happy with half of that amount raised.
I would’ve though Kulkarni would have a little bit more in this winnable/flappable seat.
Glad to see Fletcher with a robust war chest in CD07
Kulkarni has raised almost $300K more than Olson, even though CD-24 is much more vulnerable than CD-22. I suspect that donors are just waiting to see how the primary works out. Then hopefully the real money will come.
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