Yeah, I know, everyone is talking about the large amount of money being raised and spent in the SD6 race but I’m not sure that people are seeing the whole picture. On the surface, Rep. Carol Alvarado outraised and outspent former Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Sylvia Garcia and most have certainly noted that. But the biggest difference is in the amount of cash raised by the two candidates when you take away the In-Kind donations that Garcia has reported.
Running the numbers from the day after the November election until the last day of the year, here is what it looks like:
So in hard cash, Alvarado outraised Garcia better than 2-1. I certainly didn’t expect that. In-kind contributions are notorious for being inflated. Obviously Alvarado is benefitting from her status as a sitting state legislator – the big money knows that she is going to have a vote whether she wins or loses. It looks like Garcia transferred about $550,000 from her old Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner campaign account, and should have another $130,000 or so to draw from if her fundraising doesn’t pick up.
Alvarado’s largest single contributor is the HILLCOPAC, which is largely funded by Republicans. See this report that Steve Miller and Mark Lisheron did a couple of years ago for Texas Watchdog to learn more about that PAC. She also received three $10,000 contributions from three different Lawal’s that list their employer as CAMAC Energy, Inc., a Nigerian oil and gas company. Interestingly, our old friend Lee P. Brown sits on the Board of Directors of CAMAC. Speaking of former Houston mayors, Bill White also gave Alvarado $10,000. Republican big-wig Bob Perry gave Alvarado $10,000 but that was back in August of last year, so it is not included in the numbers listed above.
Neither of the Republicans in the race raised or spent substantial money. What I don’t understand is why RW Bray’s report doesn’t list In-Kind donations from Raging Elephants. I get at least one email a day supporting his candidacy from the Apostle’s group, stating that it is a political ad paid for by Raging Elephants. The last few days, the Apostle has been begging people to get to HCRP headquarters for phone banking. Now, we already know that Raging Elephants doesn’t bother with filing campaign finance reports but if a miracle were to happen and Bray somehow sneaks into a runoff, he’s going to have some ‘splaining to do. I mean, someone is paying for all that phone banking they have going on out of the Harris County Republican Party headquarters. Right?
But after talking to Dorothy Olmos last week, I’m not so sure that Bray is going to sneak in or even get more votes than she will. She gave me a breakdown of the vote from November when both she and Bray were on the ballot. In common precincts, i.e., those precincts that had her on the ballot for the SBOE and Bray on the ballot for SD6, she received roughly 5,000 more votes than he did. And that advantage held in Republican precincts, those in which the R’s beat the D’s. She has a lot of name recognition in the East End, not only because she has run for office six times, but because of her family history there.
She asked me an interesting question, one that I could answer but won’t. She wants to know why the Harris County Republican Party is supporting a guy that relocated to Texas from New Orleans after Katrina, has no roots in the party or SD6, and refuses to support Gov. Perry or the budget that came out of the legislature in 2011, over her, noting that she has carried the Republican message in the East End for a decade. Why indeed.
So that’s the campaign finance picture in the SD6 race for today. It’ll change tomorrow when the eight day out reports are filed.