Larry Kissell holds his own in 3rd Q fundraising, Robin Hayes loses ground

First let me say right from the start that I would love to have seen Larry Kissell bring in $500,000 this quarter.  He brought in a little over $80,000 to put toward 2008 and he brought in almost $30,000 to pay off debt from last cycle’s efforts.  Kissell raised over $110,000 and he did not lose ground, he did not go into debt, he’s well ahead of where he was this quarter last cycle and his poll numbers are kicking ass. 

Third quarter 2005 Larry Kissell hadn’t raised enough to report to the FEC.  If you add the money he’s raised toward 2008 and the money raised on the old account for debt reduction, Larry Kissell has raised $309,018.27 which puts him about $309,018.27 ahead of where he was this time last cycle.  As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until the October quarterly reported in 2006 that Larry had raised over $300,000 and it was still less than where he stands today.

How did Robin Hayes do?  Cycle-to-date Robin Hayes has raised about $250,000 more than he had raised at this point in 2005, however, he has over $20,000 less COH and is hemorrhaging money to try and salvage his poll numbers.  Hayes brought in $352,161 and has raised a total of about $850,716 this cycle.  In 2005 Hayes pulled in $183,279 for the quarter and was at $600,653 cycle-to-date.  In 2005 at the end of the 3rd quarter, Hayes had $547,119 COH and this quarter he has only $521,108 COH.

Where is the money going?

Hayes spent over $116,000 on printing, fundraising consulting, mailing list rentals and direct mail.  Some of those charges were paid toward the end of the quarter, so results from the efforts are pending.  Last quarter Hayes spent about $42,000 on direct mail and he appears to be going in the hole.  If he keeps this up, Kissell will have no trouble catching up with his COH figure.

I don’t know how much of Hayes’ direct mail expenditures went toward fundraising and how much went toward salvaging his name.  He recently voted against affordable healthcare for a large number of children in his district.  He makes it sound sterile by calling it SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program), but what he did was vote to deny healthcare to a majority of the children eligible for the program in the 8th district.

Currently, just over 20,000 children are eligible to receive healthcare through SCHIP which is about a 76.33% increase over the number eligible in 2000.  Many of these children are eligible because their parents have lost their jobs as a direct or indirect result of Hayes’ CAFTA vote.  Many people in the 8th District find themselves taking jobs that don’t have benefits just so they can feed and house their families.  They need low cost insurance for their families, especially their children.  Robin Hayes’ hometown of Concord has seen the highest increase in need for the program and Philip Morris hasn’t even closed yet.  The number of eligible children will skyrocket once that happens.

Robin Hayes doesn’t really care about the kids, though.  He’s far more worried about whether the rest of the country thinks folks in Concord have cooties.  He’s spent more time whining about a few inoculation recommendations than he has trying to find a solution for SCHIP funding.

What an ass.

Most of y’all know I’ve been a big Kissell supporter for a long time.  I know how hard this man is running and it is still early.  He teaches school every day, spends time with his wife and daughers as a family and makes his way to every possible event throughout the district.  This is the hardest working candidate I know.

I propose that in honor of the growing number of children eligible for SCHIP in the 8th District (up 76.33%) we each contribute $76.33 to the man who won’t deny these children health insurance.  Please go here and give $76.33 to Larry Kissell.  Snail mail and Paypal can be found here.

Robin Hayes is running scared. He’s running harder than he’s ever run, earlier than he’s ever started running before. Funny thing is, it looks like Hayes is just running in place.

As always, thank you for all you do to help Larry Kissell in his bid for NC’s 8th Congressional District seat.  You’re helping to turn NC blue and we can’t thank you enough.