{"id":10675,"date":"2018-05-24T07:00:42","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10675"},"modified":"2018-05-23T21:10:13","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T01:10:13","slug":"campaign-finance-reports-county-executive-may-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10675","title":{"rendered":"Campaign Finance Reports: County Executive, May 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

The May campaign finance reports are in and we will start breaking them down with the County Executive race.\u00a0 A note on methodology.\u00a0 First, we calculate total raised and total spent across the entire cycle and not just over the course of one report period.\u00a0 Second, we separate self-funding from funds raised from others.\u00a0 Self-funding includes money from spouses.\u00a0 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 \u201cCash Balance With Requested Public Contributions.\u201d\u00a0 That gives you a better idea of the true financial position of publicly financed campaigns.<\/p>\n

Below is our fundraising summary for the County Executive candidates.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Council Member Roger Berliner (whom your author supports) is the leader in money raised other than self-funding and also in cash on hand.\u00a0 He is closing in on a million dollars raised for the race, which was roughly Ike Leggett\u2019s total in 2006.\u00a0 He has enough money to be heard in the final month.<\/p>\n

Council Member Marc Elrich is the leader among the publicly financed candidates.\u00a0 His total raised of $745,352 is almost five times what he raised in his 2014 council race<\/a> when public financing was not yet available.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 With more than $400,000 to spend in the final month, he won\u2019t blow anyone out, but he can combine that with a grass-roots field program to finish strong.<\/p>\n

Businessman David Blair is going to break Steve Silverman\u2019s fundraising record in 2006 with more than $2 million.\u00a0 The difference is that Silverman raised his money from the business community while Blair is mostly a self-funder.\u00a0 Blair\u2019s self-financing of $1.9 million sends a message that he is deadly serious about winning.\u00a0 He is the strongest of the outsider candidates.<\/p>\n

Council Member George Leventhal will get votes because of his longevity, name recognition and sheer hard work in the campaign cycle.\u00a0 (His brilliant Avengers-themed video<\/a> could get some votes too!)\u00a0 But he doesn\u2019t have enough resources to make a big push at the end.<\/p>\n

Former Mayor of Rockville Rose Krasnow is a substantive and knowledgeable candidate who impresses those she meets.\u00a0 But she made two big mistakes in this campaign: getting in late and using public financing.\u00a0 Those mistakes reinforce each other.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Since she did get in late, traditional financing offered a better option to raise money in a hurry.\u00a0 Now she is in the same situation as Leventhal and Bill Frick: struggling to make a final push.<\/p>\n

Your author likes Delegate Bill Frick (D-16) a lot personally but he doesn\u2019t have the resources to make his case.\u00a0 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<\/a>.\u00a0 The path not taken will be harder now.<\/p>\n

Republican Robin Ficker has applied for public financing, but as of this writing, we don\u2019t know whether he will receive it.<\/p>\n

Overall, there are two competing narratives among those who are really focused on this race \u2013 admittedly, a minority of the voters.\u00a0 First, there is the view that the county should be more progressive.\u00a0 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<\/a> and big businesses.\u00a0 People with that perspective are mostly rallying behind Elrich, who is the overwhelming choice of progressive endorsing organizations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then there is the narrative advanced by your author\u2019s writings on the county budget<\/a> and the economy,<\/a> the Washington Post\u2019s endorsement<\/a> editorials<\/a>\u00a0and the now-famous report by Sage Policy Group<\/a>: to pay for progressive priorities, the county needs a stronger tax base.\u00a0 That message plays more to the outsider candidates, especially Blair, who put it in a recent mailer<\/a>.\u00a0 But there\u2019s no reason why Berliner and Leventhal shouldn\u2019t embrace that perspective too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to recognize that these views are not mutually exclusive.\u00a0 Not all progressives are skeptical of economic growth.\u00a0 And not all people who would like to see a stronger economy oppose spending the resulting revenue on progressive priorities.\u00a0 But the two messages contain differences in emphasis and differences in potential for attracting blocs of voters.\u00a0 Both of them represent change in some form, implying that running on resume and experience won\u2019t be enough in this cycle \u2013 at least not in the Executive contest.\u00a0 Everyone needs to pick a path forward to win.<\/p>\n

Next: the Council At-Large race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. The May campaign finance reports are in and we will start breaking them down with the County Executive race.\u00a0 A note on methodology.\u00a0 First, we calculate total raised and total spent across the entire cycle and not just over the course of one report period.\u00a0 Second, we separate self-funding from funds raised … Continue reading Campaign Finance Reports: County Executive, May 2018<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,272,138,492,16,84,286,46],"tags":[1545,441,1541,1627,1938,1464,1508,1596,1480,2064],"class_list":["post-10675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-bill-frick","category-campaign-finance","category-county-executive","category-george-leventhal","category-marc-elrich","category-robin-ficker","category-roger-berliner","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-bill-frick-2","tag-campaign-finance","tag-county-executive","tag-david-blair","tag-george-leventhal","tag-marc-elrich","tag-robin-ficker","tag-roger-berliner","tag-rose-krasnow"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2Mb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10675"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10687,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10675\/revisions\/10687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}