By Adam Pagnucco.
In Part One, we found that 72% of all contributions received by Congressional District 6 candidates were made by individuals (aside from the candidates themselves). In Part Two, we found that individual contributions from Maryland residents accounted for just 19% of all CD6 fundraising. Now let’s look at in-district fundraising.
This is a complicated issue to examine for two reasons. First, many candidates did not itemize a large part of their contributions as discussed in Part Two. Second, one of the district’s biggest jurisdictions – Montgomery County – is split with two other congressional districts. To deal with that issue, I characterized itemized contributions as coming from inside the district if they came from Allegany, Frederick, Garrett or Washington counties or if they came from these MoCo town designations inside the district: Boyds, Clarksburg, Damascus, Darnestown, Gaithersburg, Germantown, Montgomery Village and Poolesville. (Other small MoCo hamlets in the district did not report any contributions.) This is at best an approximation of in-district contributions, but given the unitemization issue, it might be the best measure we can get.
The chart below shows money received from in-district itemized individual contributions by candidate. Democrats appear in blue bars and Republicans appear in red ones.
The leader here is Republican Mariela Roca, who ran and lost in the primary last year. She reported receiving $21,143 – or 21% of her total – from in-district residents. But let’s remember that Democrat Tekesha Martinez, the Mayor of Hagerstown, reported receiving $114,116 in unitemized contributions. It’s easily conceivable that Martinez could lead Roca on this measure if all contributions were itemized.
For the entire field, just 4% of total fundraising came from itemized individual contributions inside CD6. So if 19% of CD6 money is coming from Maryland residents (counting itemized contributions only) but only 4% is coming from inside the district, what accounts for that difference? The biggest factor is Montgomery County. MoCo residents inside CD6 contributed $17,603 to this field. MoCo residents outside CD6 contributed $144,973. Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Potomac and Silver Spring are significant funding sources for CD6 even though they are not inside the district’s borders.
We will conclude with cash on hand and burn rate.