Fenenbock Finance Fib?

I'd expect Fenenbock to have a pretty sobering morning after reading the campaign finance reports and its hard to see how she doesn't start cutting her massive staff pretty damn quickly. She's burning through money faster than she can raise it.

That, or she's gonna have double-down and dump a whole lot more of her personal funds into her campaign to afford that massive overhead she has.

Bottom line is that it is getting more and more difficult to believe things coming out of the Fenenbock campaign. The El Paso Times ran an article about the amount of money raised by the candidates. Click here to read the story.

There was an interesting remark in the article from Veronica Cintron, who is the campaign manager for Fenenbock (ever notice how Fenenbock never talks to media?) when asked a question about how much of the money raised is from loans.

Cintron's answer made my political BS detector go off like crazy. Apparently Cintron replied that she didn't have the figures in front of her.

Well I happen to have looked them up. The figures provided to the El Paso Times (which was before the report I'm posting here was made public) tell an interesting story, although for one candidate, are pretty freaking misleading.

So Escobar reported raising $286,232 in the last fundraising cycle and Fenenbock reported raising $264,590.

Except that Fenenbock didn't raise that much money at all. In fact, she didn't even raise half that amount. Fenenbock actually raised $64,590.64.

Fenenbock loaned herself $200,000. Escobar out-raised Fenenbock by around $221,642 and some change. Don't believe me? See for yourself. Green = contributions. Red = loans.



But the authenticity of Fenenbock is further undermined when you read a statement Fenenbock sent in for the story. "The fact that we were able to raise $864,000 says a lot about our campaign..."

Yeah it does. It says you're full of it because that number is inflated by more than a 1/4 million.

Lets do so fact checking here. What you report to the feds and what you actually RAISED are important. On paper, Fenenbock says she raised over $264K, but if you subtract what she loaned herself, THAT is the real amount of money she raised. And trust me, $64K in one reporting period is money any of the other candidates in the field would love to have. But its a really small number for someone trying to make themselves a contender.

So when you take out the money that Fenenbock LOANED herself, she didn't raise $864,000. She's loaned herself a total of $300,000, so that number is actually off by more than a 1/4 million dollars and is really $564,000.

Half a million is certainly nothing to be ashamed of, and isn't that far behind Escobar's $619,000 grand total.

But the fact that in terms of actual money raised, Fenenbock now trailing Escobar is a bad sign for her. Dori had basically a 3 month and $330,000 head start  on the first filing report. So a $300k+ head start, lent herself $300k, and Escobar has over taken her in money is pretty freaking bad for Fenenbock.

Fenenbock's overhead is like a huge boat anchor around her neck. I mean sure, there's some weird expenditures in her report like a $900 brake job (thats actually the first time I've seen anyone pay for a brake job out of campaign finances - also that is a lot of money for a brake job. I know a vato on Alameda that does it way cheaper), luxury hotels, and some really expensive flights to Dallas and Fort Worth, but most of it is going to consultants and staff.

Fenenbock has to take a look around that office and make a decision about who is earning their keep around that joint. Here's the dirty little secret that I'm pretty sure her field director has known for a long time. Fenenbock has a name ID problem. Not enough people know enough about her yet. So how do you fix that? You field the crap out of that race.

But that is expensive. Lit is expensive. Mail is expensive. Walkers are expensive, unless they are volunteers, which is another advantage Escobar has with the ability to cover a lot of turf on weekends with volunteers.

At this point, Fenenbock can't do without field. So basically Chris Hernandez and his staff are essential for Dori, although they could probably streamline a little, refine the lists and drop a couple of walkers if they absolutely had to.

But Cintron and the consultant (which looks like the payments stopped so I think Archer is actually gone) are bleeding Fenenbock dry.

The X factor here is PAC money. So far it looks like the only PAC support that Fenenbock has is Carlos Sierra, which is absolutely more trouble than what he's worth if you ask me. Actually, I'm wrong. Fenenbock is part of the slate of candidates CLEAT is supporting along with Alyssa Perez and a couple of others.

Enrique Garcia reported $36,000 in the filing period, but $25,000 was a loan from himself, so he raised about $11,000. Chavez is under $5,000 and the rest of the field pretty much raised nothing.

Mark my words, Chavez is going to have the best dollar-per-vote ratio of any of the candidates. Her name ID is higher than Fenenbock and Garcia, so she will have the best number when it comes to spending the least per vote.

Fundraising sidebar - I gotta give respect where respect is due. Norma Chavez came in the race dead last. She has no chance at winning at all and picked the exact wrong race for a political comeback because of pure ego...but she's hustling for campaign cash and I have to respect that. Imagine, given the field of candidates in the County Judge's snoozer of a race, if Chavez had jumped into that race? She'd waltz right in, be in an influential position in which she gets media attention every week, and could really rehab her image and wouldn't be thinking about a legacy, she'd be thinking about her second political life.

Apparently menudazos are all the rage these days Norma is selling tickets for menudo. $10 for a bowl of menudo is some expensive ass menudo, but its a fundraiser. So I bought a ticket. Thats right, I technically donated to Norma Chavez's campaign, so I guess I'm biased now.

See Fenenbock (and Patricia Martinez), that is the proper way to do a menudazo, not just giving free menudo to people in the valley because they are brown. Now go blog about that Patty.

Okay, time to wrap this up...so here's some free advice to you congressional candidates that I have already written, but maybe one of you will suddenly get smart and do it. Escobar is the front runner. If some of you don't start pulling your political weight, there isn't going to even be a run-off. But if there is a run-off, what are you doing to make sure you're in the top two?

You aren't going to get there by trying to peel votes away from Escobar. She's a known quantity. Those that love her, aren't going anywhere. You gotta fight over those that hate her. Guess who has all those votes right now? You guys are playing for the playoffs. So you gotta win that wild card slot. Had one of you, especially Chavez and Garcia, focused on getting more votes than Dori, you'd be the one to make it to the bonus round. Both of you have the street cred to take Dori on about all the cultural appropriation and ties to the GOP, but you two keep recycling the same message that hasn't had you climb up in support yet.

Tick-tock...Early voting is in 19 days...