| There's a lot of campaign finance news in the news these days! As today is exactly halfway between the nominating conventions and the primary (my, does the time fly!), an update seems appropriate.
To delight the readers here, I will link to finance reports instead of news reports whenever possible.
First off, some updates about the statewide candidates:
- Mike Fedele filed his application for a grant today, which is being widely reported.
Slightly stranger and less-reported, though, is the fact that his committee raised $229,586.38, under the still-required $250,000 necessary to claim the grant by a little more than $20,000. Fedele leapt into the race without forming an exploratory committee, which, while commendable, means that there's no other "hidden" number to be added up with this figure. If anyone else has a clue about why this lower figure might be acceptable when it appears deficient, please share a clue below the fold.
Fedele has a little more than $9,000 on hand.
- Mark Boughton, MLN's favorite mayor, has also filed for a primary grant, listing $45,035 in receipts (also below the threshold, in this case by roughly $30,000.)
However, his Gubernatorial committee raised $42,000 by the April 10th reporting date, and if he was permitted to merge those two sums, he would in fact be over the threshold. (By way of contrast, the Wyman campaign did not include any "transferred" funds from her already-established Comptroller campaign in tallying the funds raised for her grant application, and Glassman raised her funds under the exploratory banner before switching to the Lt. Governor campaign, a scenario more clearly spelled out in the law.)
- Denise Merrill, running for SOTS also filed for a public finance grant today, with $79,302.15 raised. This time, I'll give a news story too, since it contains the quote for the next candidate.
- Gerry Garcia, another candidate for SOTS, didn't file a grant request, but the report of his progress as of today should be available on July 12th. According to the New Haven Independent, he's "over halfway there" with 15 days left to qualify.
- Over email, George Jepsen claims to be "on pace to have raised $50,000" in June, which (as he's unopposed for the nomination) might be a decent estimate of peak performance for a down-ticket candidate's fundraising potential under the CEP. He filed a termination report for his exploratory committee last week, showing that he'd raised about $12,000 in qualifying contributions from 4/1 to the convention. on top of something over $8,000 in the 1st quarter, so he's quite close to the $75,000 necessary at this point. Neither of his prospective Republican opponents are seeking public financing.
- No news yet on Lembo or Jarjura, just gossip.
Now that we're in post-grant territory for the Malloy and Lamont campaigns, each is required to file bi-weekly (and soon, weekly) finance reports. This is a pain in the butt for them, but for dorks who like to read finance reports, it's a great boon! Stroll on over to the SEEC and drop "Lamont" or "Malloy" into the Candidate Name field to see what they're up to. The most recent reports can be found here for Malloy and here for Lamont. The next report will show that Malloy has received the last of his primary funding, as Lamont went past the 175/200% thresholds as of a 6/18 report.
There's lots of good gossip in there (who's getting paid what, who is and isn't getting healthcare, interesting expenditures and the like), but the only one that's really significant is this eye-popping line in Malloy's report:
Whoa! $1,687,945.00 to SKD Knickerbocker, listed as TV time but probably for TV and direct mail both. (Saramerica broke the news of the firm's involvement in May.) This is interesting for two reasons: one, it's a smart move in the disclosure environment that the campaigns are facing, as it prevents Lamont and the media from being able to know how much Malloy spent on any particular ad buy or mailing. Apart from staff costs and rent, there won't be too many more expenditures listed in the coming Malloy reports.
The other interesting factor is that, after last month's advisory ruling from the SEEC on which candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor can and cannot merge their primary committees, I'd figured that Nancy Wyman's plan of action would be to a) get her CEP grant, b) spend it all with indecent haste, and c) jump on board the Malloy committee to allow the (now merged) campaign to use both of their names and images in all the mail and TV for the last several weeks. With all of Malloy's money out the door three weeks before her grant was filed, though, that seems unlikely. So Wyman will be able to appear in, at most, about 1/4 of the Malloy campaign's communications (since her $375,000 grant would be able to match roughly a quarter of the buy to SKD Knickerbocker.) Anyway, shows what I get for guessing.
I'll list the candidates that have received their grants from the SEEC below the fold. These are drawn from the SEEC minutes, but in reading those, there's one more item that bears mentioning above-the-fold. In the June 9th meeting, the Commission went into executive session with their legal staff and an Assistant AG:
It was moved by Commissioner Jenkins and seconded by Commissioner Stankevicius to add to the agenda an Executive Session pursuant to CGS 1-200(6)(B) and (E), and 1-210(b)(3) and (4) to discuss strategy and negotiations with respect to pending claims and litigation, and exempt records relating thereto, in the matter of Green Party v. Garfield re: U.S. Supreme Court ruling McComish v. Brewer.
That statute allows agencies to go into executive session and exempt records from disclosure in "pending claims or pending litigation to which the public agency is a party," though to my knowledge the State and the SEEC were not yet parties to the McComish v. Brewer (also known as "McComish v. Bennett") ruling.
Check out SCOTUSblog for a recent history of the case, but the nickel version is that Arizona, who has supplemental grants very similar to Connecticut's (which are automatically triggered by privately-financed candidates outspending the public finance limits), has been defending against a self-financed candidate who sought a stay to prevent the supplemental (but not the original, matching) grants from being made before their scheduled late-June disbursement. The Supreme Court has blocked the supplemental grants from being issued in Arizona, and it would obviously change the election scene pretty dramatically if the CT SEEC were to become a party to the case.
I don't have any information from behind the closed doors of the executive whether or not SEEC has reason to believe they're already a party to the suit (or, for example, if the Foley for Governor campaign has indicated that they will be joining the suit), but it's something to keep an eye on. |
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