By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One discussed issues with campaign finance data from the State Board of Elections (SBE). Part Two described differences between the traditional financing system used by Council Member Andrew Friedson and the public financing system used by Council Members Evan Glass and Will Jawando. Part Three reported receipts, expenditures and cash balance. Today we will look at the origins of contributions.
Let’s start with Friedson, who is in traditional financing. These are the percentages of contributions he has received by type of donor.
Friedson’s participation in traditional financing enables him to accept large contributions and also contributions from businesses, PACs and other organizations. That’s part of why he is outraising Glass and Jawando.
Now here is Glass.
Glass gets most of his money from taxpayers and almost all of the remaining from county residents. That’s what I would expect to see from a candidate in public financing.
Let’s finish with Jawando.
Jawando’s distribution looks like Glass’s with one exception: he received significantly more money from individuals living outside the county. Glass collected $6,856 from non-MoCo residents while Jawando collected $50,738. That’s a plus for Jawando, but he can’t get public matching funds for contributions from non-MoCo residents.
Here is the amount of money each candidate collected from individuals living inside Montgomery County.
Friedson: $964,033
Jawando: $159,239
Glass: $138,902
That’s a misleading statistic. Friedson, who is in traditional financing, can collect maximum contributions of $6,000. Jawando and Glass, who are in public financing, can only collect maximum contributions of $500.
So let’s explore this in a different way. Here is the number of unique individual MoCo residents who contributed to each candidate’s campaign. This removes multiple contributions from the same individual (which is common in all three candidates’ finance reports).
Friedson: 1,124
Glass: 1,258
Jawando: 1,213
They are pretty much all in the same ballpark.
This is one of the most interesting data points in all of the campaign finance records. Friedson represents a district while Glass and Jawando are at-large council members. Additionally, Friedson is in traditional financing, so he could rely on a small number of big contributions and still be competitive. But the three of them have similar numbers of in-county contributors, suggesting a potential comparability in activist support. That’s not what I expected to find, but here it is folks.
Next: geography.