By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One described the methodology of this series, which is hampered by the quality problems in data published by the State Board of Elections (SBE). Part Two covered receipts received by council candidates. Part Three looked at in-county contributions. Now let’s look at cash balance.
Most candidates covered by this series (which looks at council at-large, District 1 and District 3) are in public financing. The ones who are not are District 1’s Drew Morrison and District 3’s Allison Eriksen and Ricky Fai Mui. Candidates in public financing who qualify for matching funds often state the amount for which they are applying in their campaign finance reports. In those cases, I prefer to add those pending matching funds to their cash balances to approximate true financial positions. (I was able to do this for the county executive candidates.) The problem is that the applications for matching funds on the campaign finance report summary sheets are often reported inaccurately. It is one of many problems with the data released by the State Board of Elections. So every chart you see is going to have caveats – important ones.
Let’s start with cash balances for the council at-large candidates.
Scott Goldberg is the runaway leader.
CAVEAT: Goldberg was the only at-large candidate who received matching funds prior to January 14. That distribution of $156,286 was included in his cash balance. The distribution of other folks is much more fluid. Based on their in-county contributions, these other publicly financed candidates would have qualified for matching funds as of January 14: Fatmata Barrie, Marc Elrich, Jeremiah Pope, Laurie-Anne Sayles and Karla Silvestre. (Silvestre received a $73,113 distribution in January). So let’s keep it simple: Goldberg may be the reigning king of fundraising right now, but the other five candidates named above should be financially competitive.
Now let’s look at District 1 candidates.
Board of Education Member Julie Yang is clobbering her field and had even more money than Goldberg. Like Goldberg, she booked a distribution of matching funds prior to January 14 ($145,030, the maximum for a district candidate). Her pace of fundraising will now slow down because she hit the matching funds cap, but she is doing a great job.
CAVEAT: The information for Morrison and Spielberg is misleading. Spielberg requested $70,761 in matching funds after January 14. If that money is added to her cash balance, she would be close to even with Morrison.
Let’s finish with the District 3 candidates.
Rockville City Council Member Izola Shaw and Gaithersburg Mayor Jud Ashman were very close.
CAVEAT: Both Ashman and Shaw have requested matching funds at this writing, so both probably have cash balances far exceeding what was shown on January 14. If one is now leading the other at this writing, it is probably not by very much.
I would love to calculate burn rates and I was able to do that with the county executive candidates. But I am not doing it for the council candidates quite yet. The matching funds applications are incomplete and the data is too messy. I will do it the next time I look at this data.
Next: More data on unique in-county contributors and my take on these candidates next.