{"id":10705,"date":"2018-05-25T07:00:47","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10705"},"modified":"2018-05-24T19:48:22","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T23:48:22","slug":"campaign-finance-reports-council-at-large-may-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10705","title":{"rendered":"Campaign Finance Reports: Council At-Large, May 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Today, we look at the Council At-Large candidates.\u00a0 As with yesterday, we start with 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 Council At-Large candidates.<\/p>\n

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

First, a few random notes.\u00a0 As of this writing, five at-large candidates \u2013 Craig Carozza-Caviness, Ron Colbert, Paul Geller, Richard Gottfried and Darwin Romero \u2013 have not filed May reports.\u00a0 Lorna Phillips Forde did file a May report and requested matching funds, but her report contains many duplicated entries and is a big mess.\u00a0 We are not printing her numbers until they get straightened out.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That needs to be corrected or otherwise remedied.<\/p>\n

Now to the numbers.\u00a0 In the pre-public financing days, winning at-large candidates generally raised $250,000 or more with the notable exception of Marc Elrich<\/a>.\u00a0 Four candidates are in that territory: Hans Riemer (the only incumbent), Evan Glass, Bill Conway and Will Jawando.\u00a0 Gabe Albornoz and Hoan Dang are not far off.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The cash on hand leaders are Glass, Riemer and Barkley, who are virtually tied, followed by Conway and then Jawando.<\/p>\n

In evaluating differences in cash position, we don\u2019t find variances of $20,000-30,000 very significant.\u00a0 That\u2019s because candidates schedule their expenditures differently.\u00a0 Some have spent a bit more before the deadline and some held back to show a bigger balance.\u00a0 What we do find significant is the difference between candidates who have close to $200,000 available for the final push \u2013 Riemer, Glass, Barkley and Conway \u2013 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.\u00a0 (Forget about those who have $25,000 or less.)\u00a0 The latter group of candidates now faces very tough decisions on resource usage.\u00a0 A mailer to super-Dems can cost $35,000-$45,000 depending on how the universe is defined.\u00a0 So a candidate with $100,000 on hand might be able to squeeze out two or three mailers and that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 Is that enough to stand out given all the other races going on?<\/p>\n

Institutional endorsements<\/a> also play a role.\u00a0 Several of the lesser funded candidates, especially Brooks and Meitiv, have some good endorsements that could help them.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If the teachers mail for Wilhelm, that could effectively close the gap a bit between him and the top-funded candidates.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s 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.\u00a0 We\u2019re not ready to buy that for a couple reasons.\u00a0 First, among the seven County Councils that have been elected since the current structure was established in 1990, only one \u2013 the 1998-2002 council \u2013 had zero at-large female members.\u00a0 Combine that with the fact that 60% of the primary electorate is female<\/a> and it\u2019s premature to write off all the women running.\u00a0 Second, this is an unprecedented year.\u00a0 We have never had public financing before and we have never had so many people running at-large.\u00a0 What seems like conventional wisdom now could seem very unwise in the blink of an eye!\u00a0 So we expect surprises in this historic election.<\/p>\n

Next: the council district races.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Today, we look at the Council At-Large candidates.\u00a0 As with yesterday, we start with 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 … Continue reading Campaign Finance Reports: Council At-Large, 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":[151,138,209,90],"tags":[1545,2002,1987,2024,1606,1933,2014,469,422,1513,1587,607,2013,2095,2016,703],"class_list":["post-10705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-campaign-finance","category-council-at-large","category-hans-riemer","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-ashwani-jain","tag-bill-conway","tag-brandy-brooks","tag-charles-barkley","tag-council-at-large","tag-danielle-meitiv","tag-evan-glass","tag-gabe-albornoz","tag-hans-riemer","tag-hoan-dang","tag-jill-ortman-fouse","tag-marilyn-balcombe","tag-mohammad-siddique","tag-seth-grimes","tag-will-jawando"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2MF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10705","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=10705"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10713,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10705\/revisions\/10713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}