SD-6 – The Money

Well, the Ethics reports are in and, not surprisingly, there seems to be a lot of money going in and going out in this race, especially through the campaigns of Sylvia Garcia and Carol Alvarado. (I prefer to look at the raw numbers report than go page-by-page).

A look through Garcia’s finds money from unions and lawyers, along with many individuals. A look through Alvarado’s finds money from cops, firemen, and a lot of corporate/business PACs, and of course, individuals. I can’t say I’m a fan of big business/corporate PACs, but they usually do give to sitting State Reps. I couldn’t help but notice a few Republican colleagues giving Alvarad0 some checks, as well as local Republicans like Bob Perry. I guess that’s all part of the game, too, if you like that sort of thing. None of Garcia’s contributions set off my “There’s a Republican in the room!” alarms.

For Garcia, though, beyond what she’s expended, there is a huge $106K in-kind contribution from Texas Organizing Project PAC for the ground work (canvassing and phones) they are doing for the campaign as part of their endorsement. Obviously, this freed some cash to spend on the TV ads, which cost almost $135K.

From the looks of it, they are both running some disciplined campaigns with the usual expenses–consultants, signs, direct mail, printing, staff.

The bigger story is the fact that over $700,000 (and if you include the TOP in-kind, a lot more) has been spent and both are left with over $700,000 with 8 10 days until election day (of course, they could raise some more in the closing days, too). Thus far, and as of Tuesday, a little over 3,400 souls have voted, including 1,776 ballot-by-mail voters. In other words, less than 1,700 have voted in person, thus far.

There are seven more days of early voting left in which SD-6 voters may vote at any of the early voting polling locations.

As far as the rest of the candidates go, other than the big filing fee, not much else has been spent that could even compare to the top-two funded folks. But they have a lot of heart, I’m sure.

Update:

Wednesday Numbers – Today was the best day, thus far, of in-person voting in the SD-6 Early Voting period. One number that stood out was participation at Ripley House, which had 120 votes today after a low of 24 on Tuesday. I wonder if Joaquin Martinez’s Flash Vote helped?

Hopefully, this upward trend will continue.

Update:

Kuff has a more obsessive exhaustive take on the money. And Marc covers everyone who is obsessed with SD-6).