Burnt Orange Report

Money in Texas

By Karl-Thomas Musselman

From hotline, just so you have the numbers in place if you haven’t been reading the comments.

Gov. Rick Perry (R) leads in fundraising, but Compt. Carole Keeton Strayhorn (R) "isn't far behind." Perry has $8.8M CoH and raised $2.3M from 6/20-6/30.

Strayhorn raised $1.5M in the same period and has $7M CoH. Univ. of TX prof Bruce Buchanan: "It says she's a player. ... My guess is that where she stands right now is better than Perry would like" (Rodriguez, San Antonio Express-News, 7/16).

Two of Perry's biggest donors were named to state boards 5/05, "not an unusual happenstance" a veteran GOPer said. Strayhorn raised money from trial lawyers, gambling interests and the oil patch.

Ex-Rep. Chris Bell (D) raised $153K and spent $128K from Jan. to June. Bell spokesperson Jason Stanford, on the GOP totals: "That money will be gone after the March Republican primaries. Bell is not worried about that."

Author/musician Kinky Friedman (I) raised $300K through 6/05 and had $17K CoH (Selby, Austin American-Statesman, 7/16).

Now a couple things to note and I will make a more detailed post about Bell in just a bit. Perry and Strayhorn will raise as much as they feel they need to win the primary. Granted, they will spend most of it, but by no means should we think that will leave the GOP drained of cash. There may have bitter feelings towards the winner and not volunteer as much or reconsider their vote, but the cash will still flow as needed. But their nominee will be damaged.

Bell hasn't announced. We are all quite aware of this but sometimes we forget how that changes the dynamic. Many donors refuse to give to someone who isn't actually a candidate. Why would you or I want to spend $5,000 on someone who will end up dropping out of the race? Imagine how all the donors to the Jim Stork for Congress campaign in Florida felt when mid-race, he dropped out due to health with little explanation? No one likes to feel used or burned. That said, $153k is paltry. If it was from an announced candidate, I'd say yes, they'd be through. But he's not.

Kinky. Kinky is an interesting case. As an announced Independent, he's somewhere in between. Independents don't have regular donors to go to. Since he's not on the ballot, a certain amount of funds simply aren't going to come to him because as mentioned before, people don't want to waste their dollars. But at least he is an announced candidate which can give people a certain level of confidence. A short look through his report filings was interesting to me as there was about $10,000 raised from my hometown of Fredericksburg, 2/3 of that from one person.

And the profile of the Fredericksburg Kinky donors? Odd to say the least. Most hadn't voted in any political primary since 2000. One couple had voted in both political primaries in that time. A couple of others weren't even registered voters as far as I could tell. And a couple others were Republicans. And another was one of the hardcore supporters of my father's city council campaign. All over the map. If I had a state voter file it would be fun to look at the primary history of all the donors in order to determine if Kinky would bleed more support from Republicans or Democrats or if his support would be new people outside of the system.

Of course these rumors about the Governor's race are highly interesting as much as they are suspect. How about Dewhurst v. Kinky v. Sanchez? Hah, right.