By Adam Pagnucco.
On Monday, candidates for Congress filed their last campaign finance reports prior to the primary election. I’ll have more on them shortly, but let’s start with quick and dirty receipts and cash balances for this year’s races for U.S. Senate and Congressional District 6.
Senate
Let’s start with total receipts for the cycle. I am including the top two Democrats (Congressman David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks) along with former Governor Larry Hogan and – just for fun – MoCo’s own Robin Ficker. Democrats are in blue and Republicans are in red.
Trone isn’t just crushing Alsobrooks with his self-funding ($41.8 million) – he would crush any other politician in Maryland too. That said, Alsobrooks is doing a good job on this measure. Her fundraising would have been more than adequate in any other cycle, just not against Trone.
As for the Republicans, Hogan doesn’t have to spend a dime to defeat Ficker (who is almost totally self-funding) in the primary, so he can bank his money for the general election. As Josh Kurtz and Lou Peck have noted, Hogan is getting a lot of money from national Republicans. The eventual Democratic nominee is sure to hammer that home after the primary concludes.
Now let’s look at cash on hand.
The only relevant number here is Alsobrooks’s $3.2 million. Is that plus whatever she can raise over the next month enough to vault her past Trone? That’s one of the biggest questions that everyone will ask going into the primary.
Congressional District 6
Again, let’s start with total receipts for the cycle. I am not including candidates who have dropped out (Democrats Geoffrey Grammer and Joel Rubin and Republican Heath Barnes) and candidates who have not submitted regular filings (Democrats George Gluck and Kiambo White).
April McClain Delaney leads but let’s bear in mind that she loaned herself $550,000. Take that away and she is not blowing out Delegate Joe Vogel or Hagerstown Mayor Tekesha Martinez. Delaney’s self-funding capacity is one of her major assets in this race. As a group, the Republicans have raised less than the Democrats, but because there will be a national spotlight on this seat after the primary, that won’t hold them back in the general election.
Now to cash on hand.
Vogel would like this race to be perceived as a two-candidate election. I’m not so sure. Martinez has a slightly higher cash balance than he does. More importantly, some of these Democrats have been on the ballot before and two of them (Delegate Lesley Lopez and Council Member Laurie-Anne Sayles) have won other offices, so they should bring in pockets of votes. As for the Republicans, I wonder how meaningful their fundraising is given that Neil Parrott and Dan Cox are former Delegates and have been GOP nominees for Congress before. Additionally, Cox was the GOP nominee for governor two years ago. Their name recognition will likely help them outperform their finances.
There are a lot of stories lurking in this data. Time to get to work!