Big day at the Secretary of State’s office. Today’s the deadline for filing another round of campaign finance reports; there’s only one more pre-election deadline after this one.
It’s early afternoon as I write this, and only a few reports have come in, mostly not terribly interesting. Jim Condos, the extremely unopposed Dem/Repub/Prog/Families First/Prohibition/Whig/Etc, sleepwalked his way to a total of just under $5,000 in funds raised for the past month. Jack “Six Teats” “Not Quite a Lawyer” McMullen apparently failed to include a summary sheet with his filing, but I came up with a quick total of roughly $22,000 — almost all of it in big donations from out-of-staters. He raised a total of $342.50 from Vermonters. Wowee.
22K is a respectable total by Six Teats’ standards, but I doubt it will help him much.
Incumbent Treasurer Beth Pearce hadn’t officially filed yet, but her campaign issued a news release announcing a very nice total of $37,000 for the month, bringing her overall total to nearly $133,000, far more than challenger Wendy Wilton had raised — and a very noteworthy total for a first-time candidate.
Then there’s Doug Hoffer, the only other candidate to file as of 2:00 p.m. Not a great month for Doug.
He raised $5,630, bringing his campaign-to-date total to $32,665. Vince Illuzzi had more than that a month ago, plus he’s got some PAC money from Vermonters First buying ads on his behalf. Doug barely managed to outraise Jim Condos, who (did I mention?) is running unopposed this year.
Doug’s total includes $2,000 from “Friends of Bernie Sanders and $1,000 from Green Mountain PAC. That accounts for more than half his total. He also loaned his own campaign $10,000, not included in the fundraising total.
The contrast with Beth Pearce is striking. Pearce is a first-time candidate, Hoffer assumed the tough chore of challenging Tom Salmon two years ago. Both clearly have the chops for the respective jobs they seek. So, why the hell is Hoffer doing so poorly in fundraising?
(To clarify, I’ve got nothing against Beth Pearce. I salute her fundraising prowess, and hope she wins her race. My wonder, and growing ire, is aimed at all the people who aren’t supporting Doug Hoffer.)
I’ll have more to say about this in the near future. For now, I’ll just say it stinks. And if a Democrat can give me a coherent reason for the obvoius lack of love for Hoffer, I’d really like to hear it.
More later today on the rest of the campaign finance reports.