New Fundraising Totals in the Congressional Race

New Fundraising Totals in the Congressional Race

Townsend.Barney.Rochester

Earlier this week we learned that Sean Barney Sean Barney raised $150,148.75 in the first quarter of 2016, for a total of $231,000 for the entire campaign, and has $171,263.30 in cash on hand. We also learned that Lisa Blunt Rochester raised $134,770.74 in the first quarter, for a total of $256,293.15 for the entire campaign, and has 284,873.06 cash on hand, though that includes a $128,000 loan that Lisa has made to her own campaign. Last night the Townsend campaign announced that it raised $145,747.34 for the first quarter, $358,423.38 for the entire campaign, and $192,545.04 cash on hand.

However, a key question needs to be made about each campaign’s fundraising: how much of it was raised for the primary, and how much for the general? Because if the money was raised for the general, it cannot be used in the primary. How you can tell from the reports if money was raised for the primary or general is if it is marked as primary or general in the itemized contributions. From a review of each reports, Townsend has raised all of his money for the primary, while Barney and Rochester for the general and the primary. Thus, Townsend has raised $358,423.38 for the primary, while Barney raised $207,897.75 for the primary and Rochester raised $228,117.37.

If you want to know why Bryon Short dropped out, it is because he raised $72,979 in the first quarter, and $128,005 cash on hand, not enough to keep pace from Barney, Townsend and Rochester.

A review of Barney’s itemized contributions shows a lot of out of state support, and that is likely due to Barney’s connection to Vote Vets and national consultant Joe Trippi. But that is just my speculation.

Finally, Ms. Rochester was absent from the primary debate on Monday because she was attending an EMILY’s List fundraiser in Washington, DC.

Links to the reports are below:
http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/997/201604159012498997/201604159012498997.pdf
http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/275/201604159012505275/201604159012505275.pdf
http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/566/201604159012463566/201604159012463566.pdf

21 Comments

  1. chris

    Would have been better if Ms. Blunt-Rochester would have been in Delaware debating the issues in Newark instead of attending fundraiser in DC for Emily’ List. Shows where the priorities really are! ‘Ol Bernie would have a few things to say about that. College Republicans in Newark or big DC money? Big money wins every time.

  2. Dave

    “…includes a $128,000 loan that Lisa has made to her own campaign.”

    Really? That’s a pretty healthy loan, for someone who has spent a lot of time as government employee. Smart investor?

  3. puck

    Perhaps LB-R has observed how much mileage Hillary is getting by being more-feminist-than-thou. And judging by the debate coverage, she didn’t miss much.

  4. anon

    So Terry Strine donated to Townsend. Big deal.

  5. Marcellus Wallace

    Excel is a beautiful thing.

    I wondered how Sean Barney, a guy who performed so poorly in his treasurer’s race, was able to raise so much money. The answer is that very little of it — about $3 out of every $10 — came from people who work or live in DE.

    His FEC report shows that raised about $115k from individual contributors this quarter. Only about $33k of that came from Delawareans. By comparison, he raised $28k from the banking community alone, of which $22k came from investment bankers.

    This report shows that there were 50 contributions from people from DE. Coincidentally, that’s the same number of contributors if you add up just the contributors from NY (30) and DC (20).

    I’d be curious whether Townsend and Rochester also relied so heavily on out-of-state contributors. I bet not.

  6. Hmm

    Anon, perhaps I’m naive. In my opinion it is awfully telling that the candidate who is working the hardest to be the progressive candidate, has taken 15k from the former GOP chair and his family. I don’t know about you but it makes me wonder how committed he is to progressive causes I’d he’ll take 15k from the obstructionist party.

  7. Anon

    Hmm, thats not how campaigns work. People will support a candidate even if they don’t always agree with the candidate. People want good candidates and leaders, period. That’s why many people support Townsend. Not surprising that Barney’s donors are so much from outside of Delaware, where people don’t know how badly he did in 2014 and how he keeps job-hopping on a quest to become an elected official.

  8. Hmm

    So money is money and donors outside of Delaware don’t have Google, got it. Enjoy the bed you’ve made, don’t let the bed bugs bite.

  9. Marcellus Wallace

    I haven’t reviewed Lisa Blunt-Rochester’s report yet. But you can make some interesting comparisons between Barney’s and Townsend’s reports.

    Both candidates had almost the same amount of individual contributions ($115k for Barney vs. $114k for Townsend), on roughly the same number of individual contributions (around 190 for Barney, around 175 for Townsend). However, as I wrote above, Barney only received about $33k from in-state donors, or about 30% of his contribution total. He received 50 individual contributions from in-state donors, or about 25%. He had quite a few donors from NY (30), DC (20), CA (17), and MA (15).

    By contrast, Townsend received about $85k from donors who either live or work in DE. This represents almost 75% of his total contributions. In addition, 136 of his 176 individual contributions came from in-state donors. He also had about $14k’s worth of donations from CA contributors.

    As best as I can tell, the industry that is best represented in the Barney report is the banking industry. As I wrote above, he received about $28k from the banking industry in total, with about $22k of that coming from investment bankers.

    It looks like the industry best represented in the Townsend report is … [drum roll, please]… the legal industry. Townsend got around $40k from lawyers, with the vast majority of contributions ($33k, or about 84%) coming from DE lawyers. Unsurprisingly, Barney also received a lot of money from lawyers — about $23k. But in Barney’s case, most of those contributions (about $20k) came from out-of-state lawyers. Barney’s proportion of in-state vs. out-of-state lawyer contributions (16% vs. 84%) is almost exactly the opposite of Townsend’s.

    Please note that the above only relates to individual contributions, not PAC money. I ran out of gas and didn’t look at those.

  10. The idea of having a Blunt for a congressperson is growing on me……… I’ll let you know my thoughts after 4/20..

  11. Marcellus Wallace–That’s some damned good work you did there. You deserved to run out of gas after that. I never would’ve made it that far.

  12. MarcoPolo

    A note about loans…loans are kind of fake cash for a campaign. Often times candidates will loan the campaign some money to plump up their cash on hand, but never actually spend the money because they couldn’t afford to actually be personally out the loan amount. Self-loan money is often completely illusory.

    Take away LBR’s loan money and she’s in a distant last place for cash-on-hand, and a (closer) last place in Q1 fundraising.

  13. Jason330

    If you are a teller at M&T does that mean your donation came from the banking industry? I’m seriously asking.

  14. Yes.

    I’ve made this point here multiple times. I donate to candidates who are NOWHERE NEAR the politics of my employers and who would be plenty pissed off to find me and my similarly minded colleagues grouped together for a claim that my company supports Barack Obama. Some of the big companies — banks, telecoms, law firms, etc — will put out an ask to their employees (or to certain level of employees) and that kind of activity is properly characterized as Bank X supporting candidate YY. But given my own experience with campaign donations, I am always wary of statements that XX industry supports YY candidate.

  15. Marcellus Wallace

    I didn’t see any bank tellers in Sean Barney’s FEC report. I did see a bunch of private equity types and other senior-level bankers. Oh yeah, and a Mellon as well. Here’s the full list.

    Rye Barcott (NC) – Double Time Capital / Managing Partner – $250.00 1Q / $250.00 aggregate
    James Burgum (ND) – Arthur Ventures / Managing Partner – $500.00 1Q / $500.00 aggregate
    Steve Brown (MA) – InfoVest – $1,000.00 1Q/ $2,000.00 aggregate
    Jacob Cusack (DC) – Crossboundary / Managing Partner – $500.00 1Q / $500.00 aggregate
    D.C. Dewees (DE) – SVP Investments Wachoiva Securities / Investment Advisor – $1,000.00 / $1,000.00
    Donald Dixon (CA) – Trident Capital / Venture – $2,700.00 / $2,700.00
    Michael Douvadjian (MA) – UBS Financial/Financial Advisor – $500.00 / $500.00
    Justin Durand (NY) – SRS Investment Management / Analyst – $1,000.00 / $1,000.00
    Quinn Fionda (NY) – Scopia Capital Management LP / Investment Management – $1,000.00 / $1,000.00
    Andrew Hegyi (NY) – 1st Financial Funding /Real Estate – $1,000.00 / $1,000.00
    Todd Kanter (MA) – Silvercrest Assest Management Group / Managing Director – $1,000.00 / $1,000.00
    Andre Labrie (NY) – Morgan Stanley / Investment Banking – $250.00 / $250.00
    William P. McCauley (FL) – III Capital Management / CEO – $500.00 / $500.00
    Douglas McGowan (NY) – Barclays /Finance – $1,000.00 / $1,000.00
    Henry Mellon (DE) – Mellon Group LLC / Private Equity – $2,700.00 / $2,700.00
    Henry Mellon (DE) – Mellon Group LLC / Private Equity – $2,700.00 / $5,400.00
    Thomas Ripley (MD) – Severn Capital / Managing Member – $5,400.00 / $5,400.00
    Thomas Ripley (MD) – Severn Capital / Managing Member – $2,700.00 / $5,400.00
    Thomas Ripley (MD) – Severn Capital / Managing Member — ($2,700.00) / $5,400.00
    Clayton Robinson (NY) – J.P. Morgan / Investment Banker – $500.00 / $500.00
    Valerie Sill (DE) – Dupont Capital / President & CEO – $2,500.00 / $2,500.00
    William Sapoch (NJ) – Brean Capital / Broker-Dealer – $250.00 / $250.00
    Sameer Shamsi (NY) – Evercore / Banker – $500.00 / $500.00
    Giridhar Srinivasan (DC) – International Finance Corp./Senior Operations Officer -$500.00 / $1,000.00
    Sujatha Srinivasan (NY) – Goldman Sachs / Banking – $1,000.00 / $1,000.00

  16. Jason330

    What does Marcellus Wallace look like? Sorry, I can’t not think that.

  17. chris

    Great response.. WOW…that’s a banking/ Hedge fund bonanza for Barney! Interesting.

  18. Dixon Kuntz

    This is stupid. Campaigns cost money. Until the Little Sisters of the Poor start a PAC; cash the damn check and move on. The average voter couldn’t care less. This issue is a garbage strategy that only motivates the supporters of the claimant, but doesn’t add new supporters. I don’t blame Townsend for taking 15k from a Republican Party chair in a Democratic Primary. Nor do I blame Barney for taking money from banks while serving in the financial services capitol of the world. . Silly season.

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