Congressional Candidate Finance Reports

You've no doubt seen the emails and social media posts from the two main congressional candidates about what they raised in this reporting period along with their respective spin.

So here is a no BS assessment of the reports.

Escobar raised a ton of money in a short period of time, about half of what Fenenbock has raised the entire campaign season thus far. Escobar did so in about a month. Escobar raised slightly more than Fenenbock in that roughly one month period than Fenenbock raised in a three month period.

Fenenbock spins it in a strange, but not surprising way. On her social media post they spin it as "Our supporters have donated twice as much as our opponent's."

Which is true.

Except that Escobar's supporters donated half as much in about a month than Fenenbock's supporters over several months. The two roughly raised the same amount in their first 30 days.

Which leads to the big campaign question for the two congressional candidates...who is going to be able to sustain the fundraising over the life of the campaign?

Click here to see Dori Fenenbock's campaign finance report.

Click here to see Veronica Escobar's campaign finance report.

The other questions is, who is going to make the most of their contributions?

So far, Fenenbock's campaign appears to be burning through campaign contributions like crazy, with most of the money going to consultants, airfare, luxury hotel accommodations and meals. Lots and lots and lots of dough going to consultants.

Escobar doesn't have many expenditures, which is likely a function of the fact that she started so late in the fundraising period.

One of the remarkable differences, and this may come into play when you think about sustainability, is the fact that about 3/4 of Escobar's contributions came from people that live in the district. Most of Fenenbock's contributions on her first report were from people who live outside the district.

So I'm expecting PAC money to play a big part of the remainder of the campaign contributions of this race. Escobar's PAC money so far has been from PACs that have the express goal of electing Latino candidates. Many Latino organizations want the seat to go to Escobar and have put in some money early. Expect that to continue.

Interestingly Beto O'Rourke, the outgoing congressman that is taking on Ted Cruz for the US Senate seat, has a no-PAC policy.

So I combed through each and every contribution and expenditure on both reports, which took awhile. Only one of the contributions actually made me stop and double check what I was reading and it cracked me up a little.

This is a contribution to Veronica Escobar's campaign.

Yes, it is a relative of her opponent.

In fact, all 4 of the $8,100 maxed-out donors are from the Gaddy family. They are in-laws to Fenenbock.

There's some Saucedo-level bad blood in the Gaddy-Fenenbock family. When you include Alison Glass into the total, Fenenbock's in-laws account for $37, 800 of Escobar's total. That is more than 10% of what Escobar has raised so far.

Gacho.