By Adam Pagnucco.
Back in October, I ran a series on campaign finances in Congressional District 6. (See these links for Parts One, Two, Three and Four.) With the last reports now filed before the primary, it’s time to update those numbers as voters head to the polls. But first, a few major changes have occurred in this race since then, including:
April McClain Delaney, the wife of former CD6 Congressman John Delaney, entered the race in October. Fellow Democrat Joe Vogel attacked her immediately, a preview of things to come.
Delaney and self-funding Democrat Geoffrey Grammer showed the most money earlier this year.
Grammer and Democrat Joel Rubin dropped out in March. Democrat Peter Choharis dropped out this month. All three men endorsed Delaney.
Vogel had a strong month in March, getting endorsements from the teachers union and the Sierra Club.
Delaney replaced her campaign manager at the end of March.
Vogel released an internal poll showing the Democratic primary race within the margin of error as of late March. Delaney led with 17% of the vote, but Vogel, Tekesha Martinez and Lesley Lopez were all in striking distance and 48% of the voters were undecided.
Open warfare erupted between Vogel and Delaney in April, with Vogel renewing his attacks, an outside group sending a mailer against Delaney, Delaney responding with a mailer accusing Vogel of “spreading lies” and Vogel launching an anti-Delaney website. However this primary ends, neither Delaney nor Vogel will ever forget it.
A poll from an outside group supporting Vogel showed the race tied between Delaney and Vogel and provided message testing illustrating that Vogel had a path to victory.
Delaney replied with an internal poll showing her leading Vogel by 13 points.
With campaign finances filed through April 24, we now know as much as we can about the candidates’ fundraising before the May 14 primary. This series will do a deep dive on that data, but first, a word of caution. Federal campaign finance data is messy. Some of it is still in raw form, awaiting processing by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Duplicate entries abound, especially with regards to contributions made by conduit entities like ActBlue and WinRed. Individual contributions of less than $200 may be unitemized, casting a partial shroud over contribution geography. And of course, this data may be amended in the future.
I did my best to clean up these issues and assembled an 8,600+ record spreadsheet for crunching. Because of these complications and my resulting skepticism, let’s regard the numbers in this series as preliminary estimates. Only after the race ends can the i’s be dotted and the t’s crossed. Still, there is value here because it shows us the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses and the substantial differences between the parties. Make no mistake – even though the Democrats are accounting for most of the heat in the primary, this district will produce (along with the U.S. Senate race) the most competitive Congressional general election in Maryland.
On to the numbers in Part Two.