Political junkies pore through campaign finance reports like baseball fans go through the Lahman Database. And, in much the same way, it can seem pathetic to outsiders.
I poked around in Matt Heinz’s FEC report, and, um…it didn’t take very long.
Heinz only raised $33,755 in the last quarter, which is only a shade more than he loaned his campaign in the previous quarter. This leaves him with $43,263 in cash on hand.
You say, you got all that from the Weekly. Tell me something I don’t know, jackass.
Okay, here you go: Heinz’s problem isn’t the low amount of money he’s raising. It’s his burn rate, which has nothing to do with Jeffrey Donovan.
Heinz spent $50,721.95 on staff and consultants in the last quarter, including, and here’s your irony, $13,500 of that on a fundraising consultant. The salaries being paid are not out of line for a congressional campaign. Matter of fact, Ron Barber’s campaign was also very staff heavy at the beginning of the special election cycle. The difference was, he was able to raise the money to cover it.
Nearly half of that money went to Evan Hutchison, who is named as a “campaign consultant.” Hutchison has told a few people that he’s taken on party establishments before: in 2008 he ran the campaign of a fellow named Paul Newell who was running a primary contest against the Speaker of the New York Assembly, Sheldon Silver. That campaign is probably not one Heinz would like to see a re-run of. Newell’s campaign got in trouble for claiming newspaper endorsements that weren’t his and went on to lose the election by forty points.
Maybe these guys are running an insurgency and don’t need great gobs of money. They’ll live off the fat of the land.
Given that the FEC is okay with vague titles like “campaign staff” (which could cover anything from receptionist to dendrochronologist), it could very well be that one of these guys is a fantastic field organizer that is, even as we speak, mobilizing an army of thousands. Still, there is not much money being spent on voter contact (some money went to a Facebook ad though).
He’s running out of time to start on voter contact, and he isn’t going to have much money to spend on it if he can’t keep the lights on.
8 Comments
Thanks for the great analysis, Ted!
If it is true that the Heinz Campaign started fundraising after special, then you should compare only the last two weeks of June. I just wanted to point out that if you’re as good as you think you are, maybe you would’ve notice that Barber only pooled $21,500 from 20 individual donors (including gabi and her husband’s contribution at $5000). Excluding the PACs, maybe post special election hasn’t been too kind to him as well. I can’t wait to see what more you have to say in part 2 about Ron’s report.
Oh yeah, by the way… my name is Doug. Send me a link to the second part. I do have another life besides being a political junkie.
…oh yeah, and while you are at it, bring me some coffee, with cream, but no sugar.
Hey Tedski-
You failed ot mention we won the NY Times, Daily News and Post endorsements, that Silver planted a third candidate to split the primary vote and yes, my candidate did claim false endorsements and unfortunately, did so in my name. Proud of what I accomplished, anyone familiar with New York would known that no one had the courage to take on Silver for 22 years and that the NY State Legislature is one of the most dysfunctional in the country. And yes, I am guilty of taking on a hopeless cause to fight for something right. I guess risk aversion is the real ingredient of social change- thanks for enlightening me. You failed to mention a few other resume perks, but heck- why tell the whole story?
Cheers-
Evan Hutchison
Also- we have already contacted over 20k voters and Barber’s campaign is staffed by the AZ Democratic party, so in reality- he doesn’t have a local campaign staff left. And Political Junkie points out the interesting fact that his fundraising took a cliff dive after the special among individuals. But hey, I’m just a hack, so don’t take my word for it.
I got a push poll this evening trashing Ron Barber. Can’t say who funded it as that was not stated and the phone number was blocked. But the interviewer first confirmed that I was a Dem, asked my opinion of 4 Dem politicians: Ron Barber, Jonathan Rothschild, Matt Heinz, and Paula Aboud. And then launched into a series of slanted questions designed to trash Rep. Barber and then asked whether my opinion had changed after each. The questions were designed to activate Dem voter hindbrains. I have no way of saying whether Matt Heinz or the main Republican Martha McSally or anyone else (superPAC’s?) for that matter paid for the poll as it was not stated, but I find these things to be despicable in that they allege to be voter surveys while instead being designed to provide a cheap means of trashing an opponent without any responsibility on the part of whoever authorized them. My suggestion is that anyone receiving one of these polls first ask who is paying for it before allowing them to ask their questions. My guess is that will cause them to hang up and leave you alone.
Hi Tracy,
Kraynal, communications director for Heinz for Congress, here to clarify that our campaign is not involved in a push poll. I am a trained researcher and I acknowledge that push polling does us no good because of the biased questions.
If anyone has information about this push poll, please email me at kraynal@heinzforcongress.com.
One Trackback/Pingback
[...] So a couple of weeks back, I was going to comb FEC reports and find whatever was interesting. It ended up being something I didn’t have the time to pursue, so this “project” ended up being a total of one post. [...]