All posts by Adam Pagnucco

Adam Pagnucco, Becky Wagner, campaign finance, Council At-Large, Duchy Trachtenberg, George Leventhal, Hans Riemer, Marc Elrich, Nancy Floreen

Council At-Large Fundraising History

By Adam Pagnucco.

Last week, we wrote about fundraising in the Council At-Large race.  Today we put that in perspective.  How do today’s campaigns compare to the campaigns of the past?

There are two big differences between this year’s Council At-Large race and its three predecessors: 2006, 2010 and 2014.  The first is the presence of public financing.  The second is the number of open seats.  In 2006, there was one open seat vacated by Steve Silverman, who ran for County Executive.  In 2010 and 2014, all four incumbents ran again.  This year, there are three at-large vacancies – something that has never happened before.

One thing that all four cycles have in common is the importance of fundraising.  Public financing may have changed the mode by which fundraising occurs, but it did not reduce the centrality of fundraising to the prospect of winning.  Raising a lot of money doesn’t guarantee success, but it’s hard to win without it!

Below is a chart showing fundraising for Council At-Large candidates over the last four cycles.  Candidates shown include incumbents, winners and all others raising at least $150,000.  Contributions to 2018 candidates go through the Pre-Primary 1 report, which was due on May 22.  Incumbency, endorsements by the Washington Post and MCEA and place of finish are also shown.

Since 2006, all candidates who raised at least $240,000 won with one exception: Duchy Trachtenberg.  In 2010, Trachtenberg – then a first-term incumbent – committed one of the craziest decisions of all time by sitting on $146,000.  Rumor had it that she had polls showing her winning and had decided to save her money for a future race, perhaps for Executive.  Her fellow incumbent, George Leventhal, edged her out for the fourth spot by 3,981 votes.  If Trachtenberg had spent her full sum, she might have been able to send out at least another three mailers and history could have changed.

On the other side, no one raising less than $230,000 has won since 2006 with one exception: Marc Elrich.  Love him or hate him, Elrich is the exception to a lot of rules in MoCo politics and he has always vastly outperformed his fundraising.  Becky Wagner (2010) and Beth Daly (2014) were good candidates but they couldn’t quite raise enough money to break through, even with substantial self-financing.

This year, the folks whose fundraising is in the same ballpark as prior winners are Hans Riemer (the race’s sole incumbent), Evan Glass, Bill Conway and Will Jawando.  Gabe Albornoz and Hoan Dang are close.  The others on this chart are below Daly and Wagner.  All of this year’s candidates will raise a bit more money because these figures only go through a month before the primary.  But those in public financing – everyone except Delegate Charles Barkley and Ashwani Jain – have already raised most of their funds for this cycle.  Public financing does not allow for last-second $50,000 loans or bundled corporate checks to pay for a final mailer or two.

Money isn’t everything – just ask David Trone.  But it has a role and public financing has not changed that.  As we go down to the wire in the at-large race, money matters as much as ever.

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George Leventhal

Would You Pay to Support This Mailer?

By Adam Pagnucco.

George Leventhal’s campaign is soliciting contributions to finance a mailer and it promises to be a doozy.  They sent out this blast email:

Hey there,

We’re just one month away from the Maryland Primary on June 26. That means we’ve got just one month until Democrats from Takoma Park to Damascus elect our next County Executive.

That’s one month to make sure every voter from Poolesville to Burtonsville sees the super ad that’s been the talk of the town for wonks across the county.

And we’ve got one month to make sure this indelible image pops up in the mailbox of every primary voter in the county:

As one of our grassroots, people-powered campaign’s superstar supporters, George wanted to make sure you were one of the first get a peek at his new mailers.

That’s because you’ve always been our secret weapon and his superpower in this race. We simply couldn’t be this close — within striking distance of victory — without your support.

Here’s the thing: Demand is so high for the “MoCo Avengers” ad that we’ve had to divert some funds from our mailer campaign. That’s great news — but only if we can make up the difference.

To cover that gap — and ensure we can still get the full mailer program out to our targets — we need to raise $1,300 dollars between now and when they go to print next Friday.

Wait a minute.  Has Leventhal been endorsed by Greater Greater Washington?  We don’t see anything on their site.

Oh, who cares.  This is too good.  Your author might have to donate to Leventhal now!

Update: We have verified that Greater Greater Washington has indeed endorsed Leventhal.  Their blog post is not up yet.

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Adam Pagnucco, Hoan Dang

Another Mail Firm, Please?

By Adam Pagnucco.

A couple days ago, we received a mailer from Council At-Large candidate Hoan Dang.  We like Dang very much and might vote for him.  But we hate this mailer for three reasons.

First, the cover doesn’t spotlight the candidate’s name or image.  The key function of any mailer is to fix the candidate’s name in the mind of the recipient and couple it with a relatable image.  In the case of a positive mailer like this one, a good image would be the candidate, perhaps with family members and a diverse group of supporters.  This cover doesn’t do that.  Its biggest word is “What,” which could mean anything.  The candidate’s name is in relatively small print and his picture doesn’t appear.

Next, the mailer does not open easily to the interior content.  It was secured by thick tape, preventing your author from opening it without either a) taking a certain amount of time to do it carefully or b) ripping or otherwise destroying the mailer.  Dear mail firm guy: if you make it hard to open the mailer, most folks won’t open it.  You have just wasted the candidate’s money.  All tape of this kind should just be banned.  Aside from the difficulty of opening it, we don’t have an issue with the interior other than the word “What” is waaaay bigger than the much more important words “Hoan Dang.”

Finally, check out the large amount of empty space on the back.  It’s not obvious from our image, but the empty space goes all the way to the right side of this page and accounts for a majority of the back cover.  Dang is a handsome fellow with a pleasant smile.  You want to have a large shot of that smiling face, not a tiny one.  All the empty space shows that there was plenty of room to print that.

We are not criticizing Hoan Dang.  He’s a good candidate and a great guy.  But this mailer does not do him justice.  He deserves better than this!  If there’s any opportunity to do so, he should get another mail firm.

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Adam Pagnucco, campaign finance, Council At-Large, Hans Riemer

Campaign Finance Reports: Council At-Large, May 2018

By Adam Pagnucco.

Today, we look at the Council At-Large candidates.  As with yesterday, we start with a note on methodology.  First, we calculate total raised and total spent across the entire cycle and not just over the course of one report period.  Second, we separate self-funding from funds raised from others.  Self-funding includes money from spouses.  Third, for publicly financed candidates, we include public matching fund distributions that have been requested but not deposited in raised money and in the column entitled “Cash Balance With Requested Public Contributions.”  That gives you a better idea of the true financial position of publicly financed campaigns.

Below is our fundraising summary for the Council At-Large candidates.

First, a few random notes.  As of this writing, five at-large candidates – Craig Carozza-Caviness, Ron Colbert, Paul Geller, Richard Gottfried and Darwin Romero – have not filed May reports.  Lorna Phillips Forde did file a May report and requested matching funds, but her report contains many duplicated entries and is a big mess.  We are not printing her numbers until they get straightened out.  Michele Riley has given herself a combined $21,000 in two loans and one contribution, which exceeds the $12,000 self-funding maximum allowed in public financing.  That needs to be corrected or otherwise remedied.

Now to the numbers.  In the pre-public financing days, winning at-large candidates generally raised $250,000 or more with the notable exception of Marc Elrich.  Four candidates are in that territory: Hans Riemer (the only incumbent), Evan Glass, Bill Conway and Will Jawando.  Gabe Albornoz and Hoan Dang are not far off.  Delegate Charles Barkley (D-39) has not raised quite that much, but he started with a big war chest built over years of little competition in his district.  The cash on hand leaders are Glass, Riemer and Barkley, who are virtually tied, followed by Conway and then Jawando.

In evaluating differences in cash position, we don’t find variances of $20,000-30,000 very significant.  That’s because candidates schedule their expenditures differently.  Some have spent a bit more before the deadline and some held back to show a bigger balance.  What we do find significant is the difference between candidates who have close to $200,000 available for the final push – Riemer, Glass, Barkley and Conway – and those who have half that amount or less, such as Albornoz, Dang, Marilyn Balcombe, Jill Ortman-Fouse, Mohammad Siddique, Ashwani Jain, Danielle Meitiv, Seth Grimes and Brandy Brooks.  (Forget about those who have $25,000 or less.)  The latter group of candidates now faces very tough decisions on resource usage.  A mailer to super-Dems can cost $35,000-$45,000 depending on how the universe is defined.  So a candidate with $100,000 on hand might be able to squeeze out two or three mailers and that’s about it.  Is that enough to stand out given all the other races going on?

Institutional endorsements also play a role.  Several of the lesser funded candidates, especially Brooks and Meitiv, have some good endorsements that could help them.  We think the biggest beneficiary will be MCPS teacher Chris Wilhelm, who has more cash on hand than Albornoz, Dang and Balcombe and also has the Apple Ballot.  If the teachers mail for Wilhelm, that could effectively close the gap a bit between him and the top-funded candidates.

For what it’s worth, the conventional wisdom is that Riemer will be reelected, Glass and Jawando will join him and the last seat will come down to Conway or Albornoz.  We’re not ready to buy that for a couple reasons.  First, among the seven County Councils that have been elected since the current structure was established in 1990, only one – the 1998-2002 council – had zero at-large female members.  Combine that with the fact that 60% of the primary electorate is female and it’s premature to write off all the women running.  Second, this is an unprecedented year.  We have never had public financing before and we have never had so many people running at-large.  What seems like conventional wisdom now could seem very unwise in the blink of an eye!  So we expect surprises in this historic election.

Next: the council district races.

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Adam Pagnucco

A Quick Note on Mailers

By Adam Pagnucco.

In the wake of our printing Evan Glass’s Watchdog mailer, we were promptly contacted by numerous other candidates, including several in his race, asking why their mailers were not also posted.  Rather than respond to more texts and calls than we can answer in a day, let’s respond once here.

We love political mail on Seventh State.  Yes we do!  We put up Glass’s mailer because it was different and we liked it.  Most mail is not different.  Your author has a collection of MoCo political lit going back to 1986 (and a few older ones too).  It’s almost all the same.  “I believe in strong schools!”  “I will fix traffic congestion!”  “New leadership for a new day!”  “Experience you can count on!”  And so on.  There are lots of endorsement logos.  The words “progressive” and “leader” are very common.  It’s all sooooooo safe and predictable.  The only thing that has changed is that in some districts the mail from long ago would sometimes say, “I am the best Democrat to beat the Republicans!”  We wiped out all MoCo GOP office holders in 2006 so that no longer needs to be said.

These candidates want their mail posted.  Would you be willing to pay for an intern who can do it for us?

So if you want us to put up your mail, be interesting.  Be different!  Use a sense of humor.  Stand out.  Say something that other candidates don’t say.  Say something that’s directly relevant to the circumstances of your race rather than blandly generic.  Or if you want to put out a particularly awful piece, we might post that too!

Here’s an example of lit we would definitely put up: Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, 2001.

There is so much more mail coming than we can ever post so we need to pick the good ones – or at least the different ones.  And if you’re not standing out to us, you’re probably not standing out to the voters.

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Adam Pagnucco, Bill Frick, campaign finance, County Executive, George Leventhal, Marc Elrich, Robin Ficker, Roger Berliner

Campaign Finance Reports: County Executive, May 2018

By Adam Pagnucco.

The May campaign finance reports are in and we will start breaking them down with the County Executive race.  A note on methodology.  First, we calculate total raised and total spent across the entire cycle and not just over the course of one report period.  Second, we separate self-funding from funds raised from others.  Self-funding includes money from spouses.  Third, for publicly financed candidates, we include public matching fund distributions that have been requested but not deposited in raised money and in the column entitled “Cash Balance With Requested Public Contributions.”  That gives you a better idea of the true financial position of publicly financed campaigns.

Below is our fundraising summary for the County Executive candidates.

Council Member Roger Berliner (whom your author supports) is the leader in money raised other than self-funding and also in cash on hand.  He is closing in on a million dollars raised for the race, which was roughly Ike Leggett’s total in 2006.  He has enough money to be heard in the final month.

Council Member Marc Elrich is the leader among the publicly financed candidates.  His total raised of $745,352 is almost five times what he raised in his 2014 council race when public financing was not yet available.  Elrich has a long history of vastly outperforming his fundraising because of his large and loyal base of supporters, some of whom have been with him for decades.  With more than $400,000 to spend in the final month, he won’t blow anyone out, but he can combine that with a grass-roots field program to finish strong.

Businessman David Blair is going to break Steve Silverman’s fundraising record in 2006 with more than $2 million.  The difference is that Silverman raised his money from the business community while Blair is mostly a self-funder.  Blair’s self-financing of $1.9 million sends a message that he is deadly serious about winning.  He is the strongest of the outsider candidates.

Council Member George Leventhal will get votes because of his longevity, name recognition and sheer hard work in the campaign cycle.  (His brilliant Avengers-themed video could get some votes too!)  But he doesn’t have enough resources to make a big push at the end.

Former Mayor of Rockville Rose Krasnow is a substantive and knowledgeable candidate who impresses those she meets.  But she made two big mistakes in this campaign: getting in late and using public financing.  Those mistakes reinforce each other.  If she had gotten in early, she might have been able to raise enough in public financing to compete with the totals accumulated by Elrich and Leventhal.  Since she did get in late, traditional financing offered a better option to raise money in a hurry.  Now she is in the same situation as Leventhal and Bill Frick: struggling to make a final push.

Your author likes Delegate Bill Frick (D-16) a lot personally but he doesn’t have the resources to make his case.  We wish Frick had stayed in the House of Delegates and plotted a course to succeed his former district mate, Brian Frosh, as Attorney General.  The path not taken will be harder now.

Republican Robin Ficker has applied for public financing, but as of this writing, we don’t know whether he will receive it.

Overall, there are two competing narratives among those who are really focused on this race – admittedly, a minority of the voters.  First, there is the view that the county should be more progressive.  It should be bolder about closing the achievement gap, do more to help vulnerable residents (including renters), institute tougher environmental protections and push back against the influence of developers and big businesses.  People with that perspective are mostly rallying behind Elrich, who is the overwhelming choice of progressive endorsing organizations.

Then there is the narrative advanced by your author’s writings on the county budget and the economy, the Washington Post’s endorsement editorials and the now-famous report by Sage Policy Group: to pay for progressive priorities, the county needs a stronger tax base.  That message plays more to the outsider candidates, especially Blair, who put it in a recent mailer.  But there’s no reason why Berliner and Leventhal shouldn’t embrace that perspective too.

It’s important to recognize that these views are not mutually exclusive.  Not all progressives are skeptical of economic growth.  And not all people who would like to see a stronger economy oppose spending the resulting revenue on progressive priorities.  But the two messages contain differences in emphasis and differences in potential for attracting blocs of voters.  Both of them represent change in some form, implying that running on resume and experience won’t be enough in this cycle – at least not in the Executive contest.  Everyone needs to pick a path forward to win.

Next: the Council At-Large race.

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Council At-Large

Joe Biden Endorses Ashwani Jain

Former Vice President Joe Biden has endorsed Council At-Large candidate Ashwani Jain.  We reprint Jain’s press release below.

*****

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 23, 2018

CONTACT:

Jaan Williams

Campaign Manager

Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Endorses Ashwani Jain for Montgomery County Council, At-Large

Silver Spring, Md. (May 23, 2018) — Today, Friends of Ashwani Jain announced that Vice President Joseph Biden has endorsed Ashwani Jain, Democratic candidate for an At-Large seat on the Montgomery County Council. Biden is the former Vice President of the United States in the Obama Administration and previously served as a U.S. Senator from the state of Delaware from 1973 to 2009.

“I am humbled and proud to be endorsed by former Vice President Joe Biden,” said Ashwani Jain. “Working for him on the Cancer Moonshot at the White House was truly an incredible experience, and being a part of his team was one of the proudest moments of my life. I’m honored to follow his example as a kind, compassionate, tireless advocate and public servant as I run for Montgomery County Council, At-Large.”

“I have seen first-hand Ashwani Jain’s commitment to his community and our nation, and I am proud to endorse him for an At-Large seat on the Montgomery County Council,” said Vice President Biden. “He is a first-generation American and a 15-year cancer survivor who worked with me in the Administration on the Cancer Moonshot, an issue close to his heart and one that affects so many families in our community. Ashwani understands that to have a strong economy and build the middle class we must work together and ensure equal access to opportunity.”

Ashwani Jain served on the Vice President’s team working on the first ever 50-state Cancer Moonshot Summit.  Jain worked with the former Vice President, medical professionals, and researchers nationally and in Montgomery County – at the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and Walter Reed Medical Center – in the successful creation of the program. Jain previously served in the Obama-Biden Administration as the Associate Director of External Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Deputy White House Liaison at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel.

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Council District 5

Tom Hucker’s Farm Mailer

By Adam Pagnucco.

District 5 County Council Member Tom Hucker, who is running for reelection, has sent out a mailer spotlighting a Silver Spring farmer who credits him for saving his farm from development.  Hucker’s opponent, Kevin Harris, is criticizing him for not participating in public campaign financing.  This mailer is an effective counter-response in pointing out that Hucker has a progressive record going back more than twenty years, both in and out of office.  We expect to see a lot more communications like this one.

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