Fundraising roundup
AZ-01: Putzova’s fundraising has ticked up slightly, but it’s still pretty low and now’s about the time it should be picking up, even if the Arizona primary is in late summer.
CA-14: Shahid Buttar continues to raise six figures, but Nancy Pelosi remains an electoral buzzsaw, and mostly what this means is that he’ll be able to place second next month and continue this campaign into November after just falling short of that in 2018.
CA-16: Costa’s numbers came out last week, and we discussed them then. Soria’s are new, and to be honest a little weak considering the volume of labor and local official support. But considering Costa’s unusually weak cash on hand number for an endangered incumbent, Soria’s in a good position. Costa might be able to go on TV with that $900,000, but he won’t be blanketing the airwaves.
CA-18: Just like last quarter, Kumar’s numbers are much weaker than they were in the beginning. Eshoo, meanwhile is building up a warchest, and is raising more than in previous cycles, but isn’t going crazy with it yet. One notable bit from her expenditures this cycle though? She spent $33,500 on a poll, so she’s at least keeping an eye on Kumar.
CA-20: Adam Bolaños Scow came out of the gate pretty strong with a $71K quarter. He entered this race pretty late, and our best guess as to his strategy is that he wants to take it to November. The district is pretty Democratic, to the point where you can expect over 75% of the vote next month. If Scow can beat the one Republican in the race, he’ll be able to challenge Panetta in an all-Democrat November contest. That’ll still require doing pretty well next month, though, probably necessitating close to ⅓ of the Democratic vote.
CA-53: Megarich heiress Sara Jacobs has decided to use the same strategy as she tried in the previous Congressional district she ran for: dump a bunch of her own money into the race and hope that outspending the field translates into votes, putting over $500K into this race last quarter. She seems something of a co-frontrunner with San Diego City Councilor Georgette Gomez, who’s backed by labor, most of the politicians in the area, and progressive groups, a strong combination. Her fundraising is strong but obviously not a match for Jacobs’s wealth. Veteran Janessa Goldbeck isn’t raising as much money as either and doesn’t have the institutional support of Gomez, so it’s hard to see her making it through the top 2. Finally, Tom Wong dropped out shortly after raising almost $100K, and we’re mostly including him for posterity.
DE-Sen: On one hand, Scarane’s $54K is underwhelming. On the other, she only had six weeks to raise money, and Delaware is small. Coons obviously has a lot of money, but Scarane is so far much better-resourced than Kerri Harris, the 2018 challenger to Tom Carper and wound up getting 35% of the vote.
FL-05: Last time around we wondered if pharmacist Albert Chester’s self-funding was prelude to a more active campaign operation, but apparently not.
HI-02: Filing for this race just opened, and Kahele is still the only candidate in the race. Of course, filing goes on until June, but it’s been months already, and no one’s come in. He’s still building up his cash reserves and so far that’s been helping him scare other candidates out of the race.
IL-01: What a missed opportunity. Bobby Rush’s campaign is in hibernation. His best opponent, Robert Emmons, who has grassroots backing, isn’t raising very much. Meanwhile, the best fundraiser in the race, Sara Gad with nearly $80K between contributions and self-funding, has generated very little in the way of grassroots support and has earned some recent ugly headlines.
IL-03: Newman didn’t quite outraise Lipinski this time around, coming just behind at $331K to $306K, but she raised a very healthy amount. For comparison, by this time last cycle, she had raised less than $380K total. This time around, she’ll have a lot more money going into the final stretch, while Lipinski, who spent about $1.2 million in the final stretch of 2018, is in about the same position as he was then. The wildcard remains Rush Darwish, whose fundraising abilities continue to surprise and confuse us.
IL-07: You can basically just copy-paste what we said about IL-01 here, with the caveat that Davis has three challengers instead of two.
IL-11: As we mentioned last week, Ventura’s fundraising is quite bad, and she has little time left. Still, Foster’s moves to consolidate support might mean he’s worried she’ll finish highly enough to inspire a challenge next cycle after redistricting.
IN-01: see item
MD-05: While it’s an improvement from last quarter’s numbers, even a mostly volunteer campaign is going to want to be raising more than $43K at this point. Although, her campaign (sort of) announced raising $24K in January, so things have picked up since then.
MA-Sen: This is going to be a $10 million race because Joe Kennedy can’t wait a few years to cash in on his name.
MA-01: Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse’s fundraising is down from the $217K he raised last quarter, and he’s currently at a burn rate of about 100%, which is high for being so far out from the primary. This could be a one-time blip, or it could be a sign of a campaign that’s not spending money well. Either way, we hope it doesn’t happen next quarter. Like most of the late primaries, his success will hinge in part on the ability of early candidates like Cisneros and Newman to win, and thus the willingness to fund primary challengers.
MA-04: We mostly discussed this a few weeks ago, but it looks like nearly half of Khazei’s fundraising was a transfer from his 2016 senate account.
MA-06: Seth Moulton is taking a bit of a vacation from fundraising after his presidential run it seems, but he can afford to since his newest challenger, gun control advocate Angus McQuilken raised only $25K, about $3,000 of which was from other McQuilkens.
MA-08: Doctor Robbie Goldstein, who is running on a platform of single payer healthcare, did well for himself, getting $84K in the six weeks he had to raise money. After the false start last year where Mohammad Dar, also a doctor, had a solid quarter before exiting the race for family reasons, things are looking back up. Game developer Brianna Wu, who took 23% of the vote last time around, doesn’t seem to be doing much better this cycle either.
MO-01: Now this is interesting. Cori Bush, a St. Louis Black Lives Matter activist, is well known for her 2018 primary campaign against Lacy Clay, as profiled in Knock Down the House. That cycle, she was running a grassroots campaign on a shoestring budget, raising only $12K in the comparable quarter for that cycle. Bush’s $77K this quarter is her best ever, roughly doubling her past best quarter.
NM-03: The picture this quarter looks a lot like it last time around. Plame’s $411K is very strong and leads the field, but is tilted towards out of state donors. Leger was the only candidate to really improve from last quarter, going from $205K to $284K. Serna posted another weak quarter, but unfortunately did better than last time. Still, he’s a moderate candidate who’s only at $151K, which is good for progressives. John Blair, the only main Anglo candidate besides Plame, saw his fundraising cut nearly in half. There might just not be a place for him in a race with Leger and Plame. And everyone after Blair’s is raising absolutely nothing. It’s beginning to look like a 3-4 candidate field has solidified.
NJ-05: Oof. After a strong $104K opening quarter, Kreibich only raised $59K this time around. And Gottheimer’s hoovering up of money is reaching insane new heights. He has over $7 million on hand. Kreibich should get prepared for a financial onslaught if she’s looking viable by spring.
NY-03: Melanie D’Arrigo, despite her growing grassroots support, is still raising very little money, while Michael Weinstock is, well, existing, we suppose.
NY-09: Adem Bunkeddeko continues to give Rep. Yvette Clarke a (literal) run for her money. Although Bunkeddeko didn’t outraise Clarke like he did last time, he still pulled in an impressive $100K while Clarke cranked it up to $198K.
NY-12: The good news is that one challenger outraised Rep. Carolyn Maloney. The bad news is that it was Suraj Patel, the only candidate in this race who wouldn’t be a clear improvement from Maloney. The next highest fundraiser was Lauren Ashcraft with a meager $32K. Erica Vladimer and Pete Harrison each didn’t even raise $10K. To the progressives in this district, yes we know it’s a mess, no we don’t have any idea if it’ll get better
Note: Because of Harrison’s work with Data for Progress, he has worked with this newsletter’s editor, Sean McElwee. For this reason, Sean has recused himself from editing all coverage of NY-12.
NY-14: Given Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s massive national network of grassroots donors, it’s a joke anyone would think they could actually compete with her fundraising. AOC raised a whopping $1.9M this past quarter, which is about 100 times what either of her primary challengers raised.
NY-15: Once again, Ritchie Torres blew away the field in fundraising (with Michael Blake in second), Ruben Diaz Sr. raised a mediocre amount in the ballpark of $40K, and DSA-backed Samelys Lopez disappointed us with a $23K haul. If only we could combine Torres’ fundraising prowess and Lopez’s grassroots support into one candidate…
NY-16: Engel actually raised money this quarter. That’s a surprise. For comparison, it’s more than he raised the prior two quarters combined. As a normally fairly lackadaisical fundraiser, Engel must be scared to be putting work into it like this. Meanwhile Bowman is holding up well and still tapping the grassroots networks of groups like Justice Democrats well, with his best numbers yet - $162K. The money seems to be drying up for Andom though, who barely topped $20K. It’s becoming increasingly clear which lefty candidate can beat Engel.
NY-17: We already knew it, but oh man is this going to be an expensive race. Evelyn Farkas and Adam Schleifer are the money leaders, Farkas organically raising almost half a million, while Schleifer was rich enough to just drop it into his account. Mondaire Jones may not have quite as much money, but $268K is not bad at all. Because he was in the race before incumbent Nita Lowey dropped out, he started the quarter with $194K, and now has $314K, almost what Farkas does. State Senator and Democrat-when-it’s-convenient David Carlucci trails the pack, but has picked up a lot of labor support, which can make up for financial gaps. Allison fine lacks labor, grassroots support, or sheer financial heft, but putting together $200K in a little more than 2 months is a lot and she’ll be in the hunt too.
NC-02: See item
NC-06: See item
OH-03: Morgan Harper didn’t outraise Joyce Beatty this time around, which is a shame, but $221K is still more than healthy for a grassroots campaign, and her $273K in the bank is pretty good for the last two months of the campaign. Beatty meanwhile has $1.7 million on hand, but oddly isn’t spending much despite a looming election. Harper may very well sneak up and out-organize her.
OR-03: Albert Lee still isn’t raising much and Blumenaeur still doesn’t seem too concerned.
OR-04: Organizer Doyle Canning raised $50,000, and House Transportation Committee Chair Peter DeFazio raised $362,000--committee chairs generally raise absurd sums of money, thanks to their increased prominence (and corporate interests’ increased interest in buying them off--DeFazio, for example, took thousands of dollars from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Ford, HP, and Delta Airlines, among others.) This district only went for Clinton by one-tenth of a percentage point, so we’re a little wary of a primary here.
OR-05: Blue Dog Rep. Kurt Schrader outraised Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba $254,000 to $56,000; when you exclude PACs, however, Schrader outraised Gamba by less than $200. Gamba also more than doubled Schrader in small donations. Schrader doesn’t seem too concerned, only spending $150,000 despite having nearly $3 million in his campaign bank account. Gamba is still a heavy underdog, but his fundraising is picking up and it doesn’t look like Schrader is taking him as seriously as he should.
PA-18: Gerald Dickinson recovered somewhat from his $22K Q3 with a $45K one this time around, but it still isn’t a lot for a candidate running without grassroots or labor backup. It’s also notable that Mike Doyle has really slacked off this quarter, especially for a long time incumbent like him.
TN-05: Justin Jones didn’t strike us as much of a fundraiser, and indeed he isn’t. Maybe Keeda Haynes, a public defender who entered in early January, will be able to do better.
TX-28: This was mostly discussed a couple weeks ago and in this week’s item, but we will note that this quarter Cuellar got donations from Koch Industries, Republican Congressman and climate denier Lamar Smith, and, oddly Ohio Democratic Congressman Marcy Kaptur.
WA-06: Rebecca Parson surprised us last time by raising $44K in a partial quarter, but this $34K is not good. Washington’s primary is in August though, so she has some time to recover.
WA-10: Collins was the only candidate in the race last year. All the others entered in January. $79K isn’t bad, and is roughly in line with what we’d previously estimated based on his public statements. Collins will benefit from the multi-way race and his grassroots support in the district, but he should be aiming for higher in the next quarter considering all the money that’s about to hit this race.
Incumbent Challenges
IL-03
In her rematch with conservative Rep. Dan Lipinski, progressive Marie Newman got the endorsement of the Sierra Club last Thursday. As with their endorsement of Jessica Cisneros against oil-money-soaked Rep. Henry Cuellar last Tuesday, the endorsement is especially notable because the Sierra Club does not normally endorse primary challengers to Democratic incumbents. Cuellar and Lipinski—who have the full backing of the DCCC and Nancy Pelosi—are so thoroughly odious that the Sierra Club just doesn’t care what the Democratic establishment thinks about them.
Newman also announced a list of local endorsements, including multiple state representatives and aldermen from the city of Chicago. The city of Chicago saved Lipinski in 2018, as he lost the suburbs to Newman. Losing ground to Newman in the city could doom him unless he makes it up in the suburbs.
TX-28
Less than a month before the primary vote in this race, outside groups have started flooding the airwaves. Recently we’ve seen an anonymous dark money group drop $700,000 for Henry Cuellar, but this week more are coming in. The US Chamber of Commerce, a Republican-aligned business group who endorses one token Democrat a year (most recently Blue Dog Chair Stephanie Murphy) is now going up with $200,000 in Spanish language ads about Cuellar’s support of Trump trade deal. Joining them will be EMILY’s List through their group Texas Forward, which is spending $1.2 million on the race, and is currently up with this ad about how Cisneros “stands up to Republicans” while Cuellar agrees with them.
The spending won’t just be limited to outside groups. The most recent FEC filings show that Cisneros $507K in the last quarter, beating Cuellar’s $422K. Both of these campaigns have shifted into full operating mode, but it looks like Cuellar is far ahead in burning money, spending $727K last quarter with almost $3 million left in the tank. We noticed some oddities, though: $37,457 in legal bills, and $50,000 to outsource the campaign’s field program to Grassroots SG, an unusual move.
Also this week, Cisneros picked up an endorsement from CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal.
Open Races
IN-01
Jim Harper, one of the more progressive candidates running to replace retiring moderate Rep. Pete Visclosky, is attacking Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott, one of the most conservative (so conservative he almost primaried Visclosky from the right), for being cagey about a federal investigation into a thus far unnamed city contractor. McDermott has not named the contractor or specified their connection to Hammond city government, which Harper says he should do; McDermott, for his part, says he cannot do so without facing sanction for violating grand jury confidentiality. We’re not qualified to judge whether Harper or McDermott is right (although McDermott’s argument seems reasonable on its face.) What’s notable is how early this race is getting ugly.
In other IN-01 news, one of the few prospective candidates still considering entering the race bowed out. Highland Clerk-Treasurer Michael Griffin, a former Visclosky staffer, announced he would not run. It’s still anyone’s race as far as we can tell. No one’s raised much money so far, although Haake, the only one of the field who hasn’t been part of the local political world before, is really trailing.
NY-17
State Sen. David Carlucci received his fifth labor endorsement this week from Laborers Local 754, which has over 300 members in Rockland County. While Laborers Local 754 is a construction union and construction unions do tend to be on the more moderate side, they still shouldn’t be backing someone who literally has a history of caucusing with Republicans and preventing pro-labor reform. The Independent Democratic Conference, of which Carlucci was a member, helped delay the passage of a $15 minimum wage as well as a number of other progressive bills that are good for workers. He truly sucks.
MA-Sen
Sen. Ed Markey is racking up local endorsements these days. Just this week, Boston City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George and a group of 20 Massachusetts mayors, including Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz and Easthampton Mayor Nicole Lachapelle, all announced their support for Markey. George and the mayors all touted Markey’s leadership on climate as the Senate sponsor of the Green New Deal in their endorsements. While Rep. Joe Kennedy did roll out a list of endorsements from House members last month, Markey pretty much has a lock on institutional support from Massachusetts.
NC-02
We have polling! Always a welcome sight in a Congressional primary. This poll comes courtesy of candidate Deborah Ross and was conducted by ALG. They find her up with 40% of the vote, ahead of Monika Johnson-Hostler, who has 6%, Ollie Nelson with 2%, and Andrew Terrell with 1%. Terrell we’ve discussed before, and Nelson lives way outside the district, by the coast, but Monika Johnson-Hostler, the only candidate besides Deborah Ross with more than a couple percent in this poll, warrants some more discussion. Johnson-Hostler serves on the Wake County Public School Board of Education, an elected position she’s held since 2013, although her Board of Education district, District 2, isn’t entirely in NC-02. She’s also the executive director for the N.C. Coalition Against Sexual Violence.
Johnson-Hostler’s platform is mostly progressive, but it’s not clear how much daylight is between her and Ross on policy. Ross is a former director of the state ACLU, was always a solid liberal in the state house, and ran her 2016 Senate campaign pretty clearly to the left of what the consultant class was comfortable with. But politics has changed since 2016, and Ross hasn’t seemed particularly interested in talking policy much - her website doesn’t even have an issues page. That may work out for her considering she has labor on her side and her fundraising is blowing everyone else out of the water.
NC-06
Rhonda Foxx, a former chief of staff to Rep. Alma Adams (who represented Greensboro in the 2013-2017 iteration of NC-12), received the endorsement of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers, or the SMART union, on Monday. Unions are much weaker in the South than in the North, due to right-to-work laws, a relatively late start to large-scale industrialization, and historical domination by conservative, white supremacist state governments who saw organized labor as a threat to their power. However, unions are still good to have in your corner in a Democratic primary, especially if, like Foxx, you’ve never held office before and don’t have much name recognition.
Foxx faces a number of candidates in the primary for this safely Democratic seat created by North Carolina’s second court-ordered redistricting of the decade. Those candidates include 2018 NC-13 nominee Kathy Manning, 2016 NC-13 nominee and perennial candidate Bruce Davis, state Rep. Derwin Montgomery, and former state Rep. Ed Hanes; Manning, Montgomery, and Hanes are ideologically less than stellar, Davis is probably going nowhere, and Foxx’s policy positions are pretty vague thus far, so we aren’t yet sure who to root for, but she seems like the best option by process of elimination. The district includes most of the Greensboro/Winston-Salem area, and is held by Republican Rep. Mark Walker, who announced his retirement almost immediately after the North Carolina Supreme Court dismantled his heavily gerrymandered Republican district and replaced it with a fairly-drawn, compact district based in Greensboro.
Election Results
MD-07
Tuesday night gave us our first House special election of the year, and...it was bad. Former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who preceded the late Rep. Elijah Cummings, easily won the Democratic primary for the special election to succeed him, making him all but certain to win the general election in this very Democratic district that includes deep-blue parts of Baltimore City, deep-blue parts of Baltimore County, and most of deep-blue Howard County. Here’s what we had to say about Mfume in our preview of the race Tuesday morning:
Kweisi Mfume has been in Baltimore politics for decades a long time, eventually getting elected to Congress in 1986. He served for nearly a decade before resigning to run the NAACP as President, a position he held for 8 years. He was a solid liberal in Congress and generally had a successful tenure in the NAACP. That all came to end in 2004 when left because of multiple sexual harassment allegations against him. He hasn’t been honest about the situation either - Mfume had always claimed he left voluntarily, but records recently surfaced showing he was forced out.
Congress doesn’t need another sexual harasser in it, but unfortunately Mfume’s a top contender for this race. He’s got the Maryland AFL-CIO in his corner and maybe the highest name recognition of anyone. But Mfume, who hasn’t run a campaign since 2006, is running a decidedly old-school campaign.
Mfume was the most conservative of the top three candidates (largely because he has few concrete policy stances), and he’s also a probable sex pest--a fact that stands out even more when you remember that Maryland has no women representing it in Congress, and Mfume’s two closest competitors were both women.
All candidates on Tuesday night’s primary ballot will also be on the April 28 regular primary ballot unless they withdraw in the next two days. April 28 is also the date of the special general election, setting up an unusual scenario where Mfume could win a general election for MD-07 while simultaneously losing a primary election for the same district. It’s unlikely that that happens, but it’s not impossible; the April electorate will be very different from Tuesday night’s, because April 28 is also the date of Maryland’s presidential primary.
