Primary School 2/4/22
a special FEC Week issue
Imagine Rep. Henry Cuellar, alone at a Chili’s located in a Walmart parking lot in Laredo, nursing a single beer over a Quesadilla Explosion Salad as he sweats his legal troubles.
Why, you might ask, are we asking you to imagine this?
Simple: because that’s the picture painted by Cuellar’s FEC filings in 2021, right down to the campaign credit card being used at a Chili’s located in a Walmart parking lot. (Cuellar’s campaign has paid for 24 meals at that Chili’s location since April.) Cuellar (or, more likely but less entertainingly, his staff) has a habit of putting everything on the campaign credit card. 203 meals were billed to the campaign’s bank account in 2021, quite often in dollar amounts small enough to indicate that the meal described as a campaign expense was not a meeting or a campaign outing, but a solo lunch. (Or, in the case of one eighty-six-cent trip to 7/11, a quick trip to get a pack of gum or something. Maybe he bought ¼ of one of those rolling hot dogs.) In 2021, the embattled congressman’s campaign paid for more than $14,000 in meals alone—a highly unusual spending pattern at best. A charitable interpretation is that Cuellar lets staffers take the campaign credit card out on their lunch break as a job perk. Less charitable observers might describe it as brazenly skimming off the top, to an extent rarely seen in federal campaign finance disclosures. Either way, questionably-legal Olive Garden tables for one are an incredibly funny addendum to an ongoing FBI investigation for unrelated corruption.
It’s FEC week, a quarterly celebration of the Federal Elections Commission requiring campaign finance documents from every federal campaign, giving us a glimpse at how things are going for every campaign that was raising money during the past quarter. Usually we make this part of a normal issue, but this year the number of federal candidates has ballooned so much that we figured it was best to split up the campaign finance stuff. Look out for a regular, news-focused issue soon.
CA-09: Josh Harder inherited a couple of primary challengers when he decided to adopt retiring Rep. Jerry McNerney’s Stockton district as his own, and he’ll clearly have no problem dispatching them with more than six million in the bank.
CA-13: This seat didn’t open up until January, but Phil Arballo had been running in the old CA-22 before the new maps came out; his $468,000 on hand gives him a good head start over conservative Democratic Assemb. Adam Gray, who declared in January after Harder switched to CA-09.
CA-15: Given how expensive the Bay Area is, and that these candidates are nearly indistinguishable from each other on minor things like “ideology”, “policy”, and “political goals”, money is going to matter here. Obviously, San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa is in the best shape here, though that’s to be expected—you can judge a politician's potential in the Bay Area by the amount of hair grease they use, and Canepa is absolutely Newsom-level. More eye-catching is state Assemb. Kevin Mullin, who is struggling despite an endorsement from outgoing Rep. Jackie Speier. Maybe his day job (legislating) took up a lot of time recently, but if that’s not the problem, then the fact that he needed a $65K self-loan just to get up to Burlingame City Councilor Emily Beach’s level is a bad sign. Speaking of Beach, she’s…doing fine, probably?
CA-16: Anna Eshoo has a talent for attracting C-list challengers. We covered Saratoga City Councilor Rishi Kumar’s last run for Congress in 2020. This is about as much money as he was raising last time, when he lost by a lot (thankfully; his support of India’s far-right BJP is downright alarming.) Greg Tanaka is a moderate Palo Alto City Councilor who, bizarrely enough, has a ton of local endorsements, as well as walking suburban NIMBY legend Jerry Hill, who was Palo Alto’s state senator until 2021. But Tanaka would probably prefer to have literally any money for his campaign instead. And Ajwang Rading, a progressive-ish ex-staffer, had exactly one good fundraising quarter before falling off a financial cliff.
CA-29: Angelica Dueñas, who held Rep. Tony Cárdenas to an unimpressive 56.6-43.4 victory in the 2020 general election, did something unusual: she filed her quarterly campaign finance disclosure with the FEC on time. (Both Dueñas and Cárdenas are Democrats; Dueñas advanced to the general election in 2020 thanks to California’s top-two system.) Sure, this would be a terrible quarter for most candidates, but Dueñas, a remarkably dogged campaigner, was just 13% from winning last cycle while raising even less, so we encourage her to keep doing whatever it is she’s doing.
CA-32: Andrew Yang-inspired, UBI-focused challenger Aarika Rhodes had a strong quarter, while more traditional progressive Shervin Aazami lagged behind (and Rep. Brad Sherman raised more than the two combined.) Rhodes is a pro-cryptocurrency candidate who has been attacking Sherman for his pro-financial regulation stances, and receiving positive coverage in the crypto press for it. She received an unusually high number of donations in Bitcoin—9, amounting to about $11,000 this quarter. That’s surprisingly low, considering it’s usually great for your campaign coffers to broadcast to high-dollar investors that you’re looking out for them. Especially considering that most crypto enthusiasts seem to have no impulse control, a near-religious belief in the ill-defined and questionably useful technology, and an extreme willingness to part with their money—all of which combine to make crypto a scammer’s paradise—we’re honestly surprised that a crypto candidate has yet to post a staggering crypto-fueled quarterly haul.
CA-34: Progressive challenger David Kim was able to cobble together 47% of the November vote in 2020 thanks to the presence of Koreatown and many of LA’s youngest, most left-leaning neighborhoods in this district. If he manages to send Rep. Jimmy Gomez packing in their rematch, it won’t be because of this fundraising.
CA-37: Moderate state Sen. Sydney Kamlager slightly outraised progressive Culver City Mayor Daniel Lee—even though Lee was an active candidate and Kamlager was merely exploring a run during this quarter. Not a good sign.
CA-42: Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia’s prompt launch allowed him to bank $323,000 over the holiday break.
CT-01: After a respectable opening fundraising quarter, former Senate staffer Muad Hrezi’s primary challenge to Rep. John Larson seemed to be fizzling out, with two successive sluggish fundraising quarters. But Hrezi came roaring back in the last quarter of 2021, raising $183,000—nearly as much as Larson, and more than Hrezi had raised in the first three quarters of 2021 combined.
FL-10: March For Our Lives organizer Maxwell Alejandro Frost continues to lap the rest of the field; at this point, it’s clear he has a better claim to being the progressive standard-bearer in this race than any other candidate. State Sen. Randolph Bracy’s fundraising is barely better than that of local pastor Terence Gray or former State’s Attorney Aramis Ayala, but he recently got the backing of Democratic Majority For Israel—a PAC that ostensibly exists to support pro-Israel candidates in races with high stakes for US-Israeli politics, but really functions as an anti-progressive slush fund (as far as we can tell, Frost has never taken a public stance on anything related to the Israel-Palestine conflict.) If DMFI chooses to open its wallet for Bracy, the gap between him and Frost could close quickly.
FL-20: You might have thought that getting sworn in to Congress would finally motivate Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick to file a timely campaign finance report as required by federal law. You would’ve thought wrong.
GA-07: Despite representing way more of this district than either of her opponents, Blue Dog Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux is starting to look like an underdog as she seeks to fend off fellow Rep. Lucy McBath, who outraised her by a solid $300,000. Seriously, what’s the point of trying to kill Biden’s agenda if a million rich ghouls won’t crawl out of the woodwork to throw money at you so you don’t have to go online and ask for small donors to help your “grassroots team”? At least Josh Gottheimer is getting paid to be a wrench in the gears. (State Rep. Donna McLeod raised little and spent literally nothing, so it seems like the only way she’ll factor into this race is by making it possible that the two congresswomen will have to face one another in a runoff should neither clear 50% on the first ballot.)
GA-13: South Fulton City Councilman Mark Baker didn’t file with the FEC (which usually means a candidate raised under $5,000), and former state Sen. Vincent Fort began his campaign after the Q4 period, which means the most important number here is incumbent David Scott’s cash-on-hand—and $148,000 is pretty low for a corporate-friendly committee chair who’s been in Congress for decades.
HI-01: Challenger Sergio Alcubilla raised a respectable $50,000, which is enough to scrape together some of the basics of a campaign against truly awful Blue Dog Rep. Ed Case, who only raised $144,000. Alcubilla spent most of his money already, however, so he’ll need to keep up the fundraising pace. We haven’t mentioned Alcubilla before, mostly because when he switched to Congress it was to escape his flop of an LG candidacy. But since it looks like he’s doing better here, we’ll note that Alcubilla is an across-the-board progressive challenging one of the few remaining Blue Dogs who didn’t have a serious opponent, and who the state party is sick of by this point.
IL-01: Local pastor Chris Butler and activist Jahmal Cole were running before Rep. Bobby Rush announced his unexpected but overdue retirement; unless they pick up the pace, they’ll quickly get left behind by the glut of South Side politicians who’ve since jumped into the race.
IL-03: Chicago Ald. Gilbert Villegas outraised progressive state Rep. Delia Ramirez quite substantially. Something funny we noticed on Villegas’s filing was the presence of 6 different Chicago cops. Less funny and more serious was the presence of multiple pro-Israel PAC endorsements: CityPAC, To Protect Our Heritage PAC, and Americans United in Support of Democracy PAC, all suggesting that Villegas’s DMFI endorsement this week was a long time coming, and there may be more of a concerted effort from the decidedly centrist-to-conservative network of pro-Israel PACs to elect him in the months ahead. We also noticed Ruben Gallego’s LLEGO-PAC on there, which is a shame—we like Gallego (and he may be the next senator from Arizona if he goes through with a primary challenge to Kyrsten Sinema.)
IL-06: If Marie Newman defeats fellow Rep. Sean Casten, it won’t be because of money. He outraised her 2 to 1 and has a 3 to 1 advantage in cash on hand.
IL-07: Danny Davis finally raised some money! Fortunately for Kina Collins, raising money doesn’t actually do anything for a campaign; only spending it does, and Davis barely spent any money.
IL-08: Once again, moderate incumbent Raja Krishnamoorthi raised an ungodly sum; once again, progressive challenger Junaid Ahmed raised a solid six figures, showing he can afford to run a vigorous campaign.
IL-13: Nikki Budzinski is the overwhelming establishment favorite in this new St. Louis suburbs-to-Urbana-Champaign safely Dem district. Her similarly bland moderate opponent isn’t raising much, so welcome to Congress, Nikki.
IL-17: For an open, Biden+7 district, packed to the gills with elected politicians and well known faces, you’d think someone would have had a good quarter, but apparently not. If there were a candidate raising Budzinski numbers here, we’d say that everyone else was doing poorly, but since nobody raised very much, we’ll just say it’s anyone’s game at this point. Eric Sorensen and Litesa Wallace had seven weeks to raise money, Angela Normoyle had ten, and Jonathan Logemann had eleven.
KY-03: Uh, so what’s going on at Attica Scott HQ? State Sen. Morgan McGarvey, as we mentioned previously, is raising fucking bonkers amounts of money, and Scott, a state representative, is very far behind. We want Scott to succeed here, but McGarvey is approaching the kind of money that would pay for wall-to-wall ads on the Louisville TV market, while Scott would be lucky to even be on TV, and in a two-way race, you probably need to be on TV.
MD-04: Former Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey surprisingly outraised Del. Jazz Lewis, despite Lewis being House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s protégé and chairing the Democratic caucus in the Maryland House of Delegates. Former Rep. Donna Edwards only declared her campaign in January, but we’d be shocked if she didn’t raise a lot.
MD-05: Sadly, challenger Mckayla Wilkes is struggling even more than she did in 2020 as she takes on Steny Hoyer.
MD-06: Nonprofit executive Ben Smilowitz raised a respectable sum, while Rep. David Trone raised basically nothing as usual because he self-funds most of his campaign expenses. (Trone co-owns the Total Wine & More chain of liquor stores, and is worth at least tens of millions of dollars.) Smilowitz, despite being a former ACLU board member, doesn’t appear to be running as a movement progressive.
MI-11: Haley Stevens nearly doubled Andy Levin’s fundraising; Levin, a progressive, already starts at a bit of a disadvantage against the more moderate Stevens, because she represents more of this newly-drawn district than Levin does.
MI-12: Rashida Tlaib would be a clear favorite in her newly-adopted Detroit/Dearborn district even if she hadn’t amassed a million-dollar cushion, but since she has, we’re even more skeptical of former state Rep. Shanelle Jackson’s chances now than we were before (and we already thought she had no shot.)
MI-13: Shri Thanedar self-funded a little over $5 million—but all but $5200 of that was a loan, not a contribution, meaning he can get it back as long as he hasn’t spent it or officially forgiven the loans. Until he starts actually spending it (and given his history we expect him to spend at least some of it), it should be treated as a gimmick meant to scare off potential opponents.
MN-04: Longtime Rep. Betty McCollum got outraised by progressive challenger Amane Badhasso, an inauspicious start for the congresswoman in her first seriously contested primary since her initial election to Congress in 2000.
NV-01: Rep. Dina Titus isn’t spending like she’s scared of Amy Vilela, who, while she isn’t doing fantastically in the fundraising department, did at least manage to avoid the Q4 slump
NJ-10: Once again, progressive Imani Oakley cleared six figures; however, Rep. Donald Payne Jr. clearly took notice after getting outraised last quarter, outraising Oakley by about $100,000 this quarter.
NY-01: New York Democrats drew a congressional map that combined the most Democratic parts of the old NY-01 and NY-02 into a new, Dem-leaning NY-01, and unsurprisingly, the Democratic primary field for the new district includes Democratic candidates for both of the old districts. 2020 NY-02 nominee Jackie Gordon only kicked off her 2022 campaign this quarter, so while she kept pace with Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn and was only modestly outraised by Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, the two legislators have a significant financial edge. (In Fleming’s case, it’s unsurprising that she’s got so much in the bank—she represents the Hamptons in the county legislature and she’s been running since May 2021.)
NY-03: Only progressive activist Melanie D’Arrigo and Nassau County Legislator Joshua Lafazan began their campaigns before the end of 2021; we’ve already mentioned Lafazan’s oversized fundraising haul, which was all raised in just 18 days. Lafazan is a conservative former Republican best known for writing a bill that would’ve given cops the ability to sue protesters under the county’s hate crime statute if protesters did anything that so much as “seriously annoyed” police, or followed them in a public place. (If you’re wondering how this could possibly be constitutional given the right to record the police is protected under the First Amendment—and, for that matter, under New York state law—the simple answer is it probably isn’t.) Cool law, dude!
NY-10: After a promising first quarter, Ashmi Sheth’s fundraising has fallen off a cliff. You can’t win in Manhattan with that. Honestly, you probably couldn’t win Manhattan with her previous low six figures total, but that was at least a start.
NY-11: Leftist Brittany Ramos DeBarros had another decent quarter in this newly-blue district, but Blue Dog former Rep. Max Rose raised a staggering $812,000. Oof. This race, as we will go deeper into this weekend, is going to give us ulcers.
NY-12: As always, we’re kind of amazed that Carolyn Maloney isn’t raising more. $456,000 is a good haul…unless you’re entering your thirtieth year in Congress, you chair a powerful congressional committee, and you represent the literal richest place in America—tony Manhattan neighborhoods home to an abundance of CEOs, celebrities, financiers, and heirs. Maloney has picked up her fundraising game after a close 2020, but it’s come at a cost, literally. She spent $300K last quarter, eating up most of her new money. And the bulk of that $300K is going to fundraising: three separate fundraising consultants were on her payroll as she threw glitzy fundraisers catered by, literally, “Extravagant Events Catering”. Her disbursement sheet shows money flying around for every conceivable expense, including $700 for piano tuning. Meanwhile, Rana Abdelhamid had another solid quarter, and Maya Contreras fell further behind in the money race.
NY-16: Democratic District Leader and political operative Manuel Casanova didn’t raise much, and he burned through almost everything he spent. Jamaal Bowman probably doesn’t have to worry.
NC-06: Clay Aiken didn’t enter the race until after the end of the quarter, so we won’t get an idea of his fundraising ability until April; however, we do have a picture of the rest of the field, and progressive Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam is clearly out in front, raising $305,000. State Sens. Wiley Nickel and Valerie Foushee lagged behind with $150,000 and $163,000, respectively; we reported two weeks ago that Foushee, who can’t casually self-fund six figures like Nickel did, fired her finance director over the holidays right before the end of her dissatisfying quarter. It also looks like none of the other candidates are going to make much of an impact in this race.
OR-04: Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle outraised Airbnb executive Andrew Kalloch, but neither has a particularly noteworthy cash advantage over the other.
OR-05: Kurt Schrader, one of the most shamelessly corporate Democrats in Congress, will never struggle with fundraising; what matters is that progressive Jamie McLeod-Skinner raised $231,000, quite good for a primary challenger.
OR-06: As we previously noted, the money race is going to be dominated by not one, but two Bitcoin enthusiast self-funders, though it turns out a third big-money candidate has already arrived. Remember last week when we speculated that new entrant Carrick Flynn might know a lot of rich people by virtue of being in the tech and think tank worlds? He says he raised $430,000 in his first ten days. That’s too recent to be on these reports, but we hope everyone in the Portland area is ready for some very annoying ads. No one else did too well, though only Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith was bad enough to seriously endanger her campaign. State Rep. Andrea Salinas literally drew this district and had two months—she should have done better than $178K. And while Kathleen Harder didn’t raise a ton of money, it’s at least a real amount of money, meaning she’s in the mix too. With the entries of Flynn and state Rep. Teresa Alonso Leon in January, that means there are now seven candidates to watch for.
PA-03: Activist Alexandra Hunt had her first six-figure quarter, while Rep. Dwight Evans raised about what he usually does.
PA-18: We had low expectations for attorney Steve Irwin (no relation to the famous one) when he entered the race; clearly, we were wrong. Even if he has limited organic base and no clear pitch to voters, three hundred grand is three hundred grand, especially when Summer Lee is $60K behind him. As a prominent elected official with the Justice Democrats endorsement, it’s not like $272K is disappointing, but we had hoped for better. Attorney Jerry Dickinson is raising enough to hold on, but if he had been hoping that the retirement of Rep. Mike Doyle would change his financial picture, those hopes were dashed this quarter.
TX-28: Henry Cuellar is outraising and outspending Jessica Cisneros pretty substantially, though we doubt the campaign Chili’s tab is going to win him any votes.
TX-30: Legislative staffer Abel Mulugheta was the surprise fundraising leader with $252,000. Former Biden campaign official Jane Hope Hamilton, probably the strongest moderate candidate, raised $111,000. State Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the frontrunner and progressive favorite, raised $101,000, and fellow progressive Jessica Mason raised $65,000. Four other candidates raised very little, despite each having political connections. Our takeaway is that only Mulugheta and perhaps Hope Hamilton raised enough to potentially change the trajectory of the race before the March 1 primary, which they’ll need to do if they want to advance to a runoff with Crockett.
TX-35: Unless something really weird happens, Greg Casar is headed to Congress. Guess there’s a reason that state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez sounded so desperate for DMFI intervention in a recent interview. At least he’s raising actual money, though. Former San Antonio city councilor Rebecca Viagrán just left the council for a city of over a million people. This is the kind of money that says she’s running for Congress as a hobby. (Still, we wouldn’t discount the possibility of Viagrán, rather than Rodriguez, making it to a runoff with Casar, as the only woman and only San Antonio candidate in the race.)
TX-37: On one hand, Lloyd Doggett has the cash saved up to absolutely bury 2020 TX-31 nominee Donna Imam if he wants to. On the other hand, he seems bizarrely reluctant to spend his money for a guy with five million dollars in the bank and nowhere else to spend it. Doggett may have run for Senate before, but he’s not going to be doing that again in his late 70s
VA-08: Victoria Virasingh raised a promising $91,000 in her first quarter; this quarter’s $32,000 is a lot less impressive. Rep. Don Beyer, a car dealership tycoon, raised $248,000 but can self-fund millions whenever he wants.
VT-AL: State Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint had a stronger start to her fundraising—$125,000 in her first day, better than Lt. Gov. Molly Gray’s $110,000 in her first week—but Gray, the more moderate of the two, obviously kept up a steadier stream of donations, because she ultimately outraised Balint by more than $100,000. Progressive state Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale entered the race after the quarter ended.