The FEC’s April 15th deadline for candidates to file their first quarter fundraising reports has come and gone, and now it’s SSP’s turn to rake together all the interesting numbers for House incumbents and the (very few) challengers who have filed.
As always, all numbers are in thousands and are adjusted for rounding. “CoH” indicates cash-on hand, and the “Raised” column contains strictly funds raised through donor contributions, not loans. An “X” in the “Frontline” column indicates a Democratic incumbent’s participation in the DCCC’s Frontline program.
A few quick notes:
- The average amount raised by a Frontline participant was $255K, with each member having an average CoH of $269K.
- The biggest raiser of the Frontline class was John Adler, who raked in $461K. The weakest? Carol Shea-Porter, who only took in $111K. She never makes our lives easy…
- Challengers who outraised incumbents: Beth Krom (D, CA-48), Steve Chabot (R, OH-01) and Jack McDonald (D, TX-10).
- Fuel for the retirement watch: Check out the weak hauls of GOP Reps. Henry Brown ($22K), Frank Wolf ($2K) and Bill Young ($1K). Delaware’s Mike Castle will want to pump up the volume now that he’s facing a top-tier challenger, but he’s also sitting on a fairly hefty war chest.
- ID-01: Bill “Brain Fade” Sali, who is supposedly mulling a rematch with Democrat Walt Minnick, brought in nothing — and he’s still carrying about $100,000 worth of debts from his previous two campaigns. Not exactly an encouraging sign for those of us who love to have Sali to kick around.
- LA-02: Joe Cao raises $143K, but only banks $61K at the end of the quarter. Not impressive at all — but even if he was raking in Mark Kirk-like sums per quarter, he’d still lose. So what’s the point?
Kratovil (if things stay this way) will be safe till redistricting. Harris is raising enough to suck most of the oxygen up from the Republican primary, while Kratovil outraises him significantly with the power of incumbency. I wish we were seeing a similar story in OH-01. Chabot will have to kick it up to stay safe.
Nice to see Bright carrying his own weight now with Frontline helping him out.
VA-10 went for Obama by 7 points after going for Bush by double digits in 2004. This seat is getting bluer by the day and will probably have a Dem PVI when they recalculate it in four years.
Finding a strong challenger a la Carney/Justice needs to be near the top of the to-do list for the DCCC and VA Dems. Judy Feder, god bless her, turned out to be a bit of a dud and should focus on using her health care know-how in the Obama administration.
The average incumbent D on that list has 89% more of a Q1 take and a 60% more CoH than the average incumbent R. That really says everything that needs to be said about the sheer monetary value of being in the majority for the indefinite future.
and they’re showing 2008 numbers, any idea when they’ll be updated to show 2009 Q1 numbers?
Josh Segall made him spend nearly a million dollars and is back to defeat him in 2010.
This should be one of the top targeted seats originally drawn to elect a Dem.
Run for a state-level office in mind?
Do we have any announced candidates against him we like? I like to favorite candidate websites for races we could win. I have all the senate races (so far) and now I’m going to start adding house candidates
Wow I can’t believe Beth Krom outraised John Campbell! John Campbell may have more cash on hand, but a Democrat outraising an incumbent Republican in south Orange County? AMAZING!
Looking at the FEC site I noticed that Campbell only had about 9 actual donors and a bunch of PAC contributions mostly from out of his district while Beth’s were mostly from the district.
Also Beth didn’t even enter the race until about half way through the first quarter. This is going to be a very interesting race to watch!
Hedrick has a big opening against Calvert this cycle, but he’s not going to surprise him this time. He needs to step it up a bit.
And Durston’s going to have to do MUCH better to increase his share of the vote in CA-03, esp. with only the Governor’s race at the top of the ballot to drive turnout.
The Wa Po identifies 54 freshmen, 32 Democrats and 22 nRepublicans. The 32 Democrats average raising $260,624 and have an average of $237,159 cash on hand. The 22 Republicans average raising $143,394 and have an average of $109,772 cash on hand.
Only three of the 32 freshmen Democrats raised under $100,000 for the quarter” Jared Polis, Chellie Pingree, and Paul Tonko. All come from fairly safe seats. Polis is self funding. Pingree is the former head of Common Cause and may be averse to fund raising. Tonko was in the NY State Assembly for around 20 years and may not be used to the higher bucks of the federal election. He raised $55 K.
Seven of the 22 Republicans raised under $100 K (Duncan Hunter, Mike Coffman, Bill Posey, Tom Rooney, Gregg Harper, David Roe and Cynthis Lummis). Roe is in a class of his own having raised $364, even less than Burris. Harper, at $14,250, appears to have tried. Roe,brw, bumped off a freshman Republican to get the seat. The district is safe Republican but maybe the seat is not safe for an incumbent.