July Campaign Finance Reports

So finance reports were due this month and there's a couple of interesting developments.

I'm gonna start with the sheriff's race because the Democratic Party had a big function this weekend and coupled with the release of the finance reports, it was probably a rude awakening for one candidate in particular - Carlos Carrillo.

Carrillo is a running against El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles. There is one fundamental problem with Carrillo's candidacy that is going to make it very difficult for Carrillo to gain any real traction among Democratic Party regulars - Carrillo voted for Trump in the last presidential election. To be fair to Carrillo, he's indicated that he is no longer a Trump supporter, but the only other major political even't Carrillo has attended this year was, you guessed it, Trump's visit to the El Paso County Coliseum.

Trump still owes the City of El Paso a pretty penny for that event by the way.

A quick look at the finance report supports what is likely common sense to most people - Carrillo is a pretty big underdog and seeing such a funding disparity has got to be pretty sobering for Carrillo's campaign team.

Carrillo raise $2,835 and has already spent $2,311.30 so far. It looks like most of the campaign money Carrillo has spent so far has been on booze and food - with restaurants and bars being the most frequent entries on his report.

Here's a quick screenshot of block 17 of his finance report. The entire report is available here.

By contrast, Sheriff Wiles raised $43,830.30 and spent under $10,000 of it so far.

The most notable thing on Wiles' report is that the Sheriff's Officers' Association gave $3,800 - which is significant in that the union typically funds the opponent. In fact the union contribution to the opponents is usually the largest contribution the opponents receive. So the fact that they gave Wiles that money means that they aren't going to fund Carrillo.

That is pretty significant. If Carrillo didn't get the union's support, its going to be hard to see where else he can raise the kind of money necessary to be competitive.

Looks like Wiles' biggest expenditures were a billboard and some printed materials.

Here is block 17 for Sheriff Wiles.

Carrillo is really going to have to step up the fundraising game if he wants to even have an outside shot of not getting completely destroyed in this election cycle. Taking on a well-known and popular incumbent takes a lot of money to overcome that name ID, get some decent voter contact done, and produce deliverable materials.

Bottom line is that Carrillo is going to need at least $80,000 (though likely much more) to have a shot at defeating Wiles. And he's going to have to be more disciplined than spending campaign contributions on lunches and Spec's in order to make that money stretch.

Here's the stark reality for Carrillo's campaign - if he was only able to raise $3,000 (I'm rounding up) to Wiles' $43,000 (I'm rounding down) - then he's just not ever really going to be a viable candidate. If you know anything about building a decent mail campaign, you'll know that Carrillo would essentially have to double is campaign money to afford a mailer.

Thats one mailer.

One mailer wouldn't be enough for someone running in an open seat county wide. You'd need at least three, at a minimum. If you're running against one of, if not the most, popular Democrats in the County, you're going to have to send way more mail than that. And that's assuming two really big factors - one, that you are the ONLY person running against that popular incumbent, and two, that you don't get hit by the incumbent for your own baggage.

But lets just say they have a strategy that doesn't include mail. I don't know why you would, but lets assume you're just going to have a heretofore never seen volunteer base that are going to knock and call voters all day...even that stuff costs more money that he's been able to raise.

You don't have to have the most amount of money to win. I'll be the first to tell you that. You can be behind in fundraising if you're smart about how you spend your money and still win.

But you have to be at least somewhat competitive and right now, he's not in the same universe as Wiles in terms of fundraising. So far Carrillo has spent $100 on a political consultant - be he has a new consultant on board - which Carrillo calls "the Dream Team" and that bill is about to be much higher than $100.

Carrillo needs something really big to change in his favor...assuming no one else gets in the race. Anyone else in the race further complicates Carrillo's chances.

At this point, its hard to see how Carrillo even pulls Wiles under 70% of the vote, much less even makes himself competitive. He better stop buying booze and lunch with this campaign money and switch to buying scratch-off tickets. At least he'd have a chance at increasing how much money he has.

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Constable Sommers Files Final Report

Controversial Constable Angie Sommers filed a "final report" last January and didn't file a report in July. It could be a sign that she is not seeking re-election.

It could also just be a mistake, which would be a surprise considering the Constable is a longtime incumbent and has filed many campaign finance reports.

If it was a mistake and unintended, then the constable is going to have a bit of a headache on her hands getting her campaign up and running again.

That seat hasn't been an open seat in many years and if she is NOT running for reelection then it will likely have a lot of candidates lined up for that job. Although there is already talk of people challenging Sommers following her recent anti-gay comments on social media.

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Mayor Versus Mayor

So this is the race that has the most interesting finance report because its actually pretty close in terms of fundraising.

Mayor Margo raised $179, 519.07 and Mayor Leeser raised $90, 819.98. Normally you'd look at that and say that Margo nearly doubled how much money Leeser raised. But if you read into the details of the report, Margo spent almost $36,000 on his campaign. Normally when someone spends that kind of cash on a race, you'd expect to see something for that kind of money. But predictably a large amount of that money went to Forma Group for consulting.

Margo also spent money on two other things that I thought was pretty interesting. One, he hired an out-of-town crisis management firm and two, he is apparently using campaign dollars to pay his legal fees.

Margo appears to have had a few fundraisers and it looks like Leeser has only had one so far. So with Margo spending money on consulting firms, legal expenses, and a crisis management firm, it looks like their money is much closer than you'd initially think.

What I honestly can't figure out is why Margo loaned himself $10,000.