There has been very little excitement in the 149th runoff, with neither candidate able to raise substantial funds. I mentioned that Mr. O’Connor has outspent his opponent 8-1, which seems very strange considering she has out-raised him 12-1. What the heck? Well, we are talking about very, very little money on the contribution side:
|
Contributions |
15-Jan |
30 day |
8 day |
Runoff |
Total |
|
O’Connor |
|
300 |
300 |
100 |
$ 700 |
|
Williams |
612 |
620 |
3,000 |
4,150 |
$ 8,382 |
See, I told you, 12-1! But that isn’t the whole story because more than half of Ms. Williams’ contributions have been “In-Kind” from Austin consultant Ryan Hutchison: $4,250. In terms of cash, she has only taken in $4,132, giving her only a 6-1 advantage.
But that doesn’t mean much in this race because Mr. O’Connor has forked over some serious change in his effort to “clean up” the Legislature:
|
Expenditures |
15-Jan |
30 day |
8 day |
Runoff |
Total |
|
O’Connor |
2,750 |
1,276 |
12,508 |
11,432 |
$ 27,966 |
|
Williams |
893 |
340 |
1,296 |
909 |
$ 3,438 |
That’s a lot of money for most folks. You’d think that he could have avoided a runoff, and he almost did, garnering 45{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the vote but a young Vietnamese guy by the name of Bryan Le took 21{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}, and Ms. Williams 34{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}.
It will be interesting to see the results Tuesday night but one thing is clear: the Republican frontrunner has only been able to raise $700. Mr. Vo took in over $300,000 in 2008.
Not good.