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April 26 DC Special Election
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jsteele
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I just added Alan Page's statement:
http://www.dcurbanmom.com/weblog/2011/03/10/page The complete list now is: Josh Lopez http://www.dcurbanmom.com/weblog/2011/03/01/lopez Arkan Haile http://www.dcurbanmom.com/weblog/2011/03/04/haile Patrick Mara http://www.dcurbanmom.com/weblog/2011/03/07/maria (yes, I mistyped that when I posted it) Bryan Weaver http://www.dcurbanmom.com/weblog/2011/03/09/weaver Alan Page http://www.dcurbanmom.com/weblog/2011/03/10/page |
jsteele
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The last fundraising reports of this campaign were due yesterday. I am going to research them today, but my initial take is this:
1) Orange went from having raised zero dollars on January 31 to having raised nearly $200,000 on this report. He claims to have spent zero. Most of his money came from California and Georgia and a lot of it was corporate. I'll be looking at this in more detail, but this was unexpected and could change my analysis of his potential in this race. 2) Biddle didn't raise all that much and spent a lot -- mostly on salaries and a lot of that went to Kwame Brown's dad. He has less cash on hand now than Weaver, Mara, and I think Patterson. 3) Mara did relatively well. Not much corporate money. I want to look further into the source of his cash. 4) Patterson has been raising quite a bit, but also spending. Still is not on the ballot those is appealing. 5) Josh Lopez did a decent job, including $1,000 from Fenty frat brothers Banneker Ventures ($1k is the max contribution). 6) Weaver pulled in about $20k mostly in small amounts from individuals. He is still very much in the mix. |
Anonymous
| Vincent Orange is running so he can invinte Harold Brazil to some parties and drink their scotch-those 2 love their scotch |
jsteele
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Some Orange numbers:
He raised $191,000, but only $69,070 was from DC. Of that, $23,000 was from DC corporations and $1,000 from AFSCME. He raised $45,070 from 67 individuals in DC. That doesn't show much support from actual DC voters, but the money will allow him to do a lot of organizing. He can essentially bus every Orange voter to the polls, heck he can limo them there. |
jsteele
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Having taken a look at Biddle's report, the trend of him making foolish errors is continuing. He is really turning himself into a joke, which is sad given he is far from a joke. But, his report is completely filled out wrong. It doesn't properly carry over numbers from the previous report and then comes up with an incorrect number for cash on hand. He actually has nearly $40,000, or over twice the amount he reported. That's if expenditures were reported correctly which is anybody's guess. What's funny is that Kwame Brown could never get his reports correct either and is currently being investigated for it. Biddle has not only relied on Kwame's support, but has been paying Kwame's father as a consultant. Now, he is following Kwame's footsteps in filing error-filled reports. At this rate, a black on black Navigator should be showing up in Biddle's driveway any day now.
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jsteele
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More data drawn from Biddle's finance report. He has raised a total of just over $100,000. About $40,000 of that has come from corporations, PACs, and labor. That is a lower amount than I would have expected. There are a few interesting tidbits among the corporate donations. There are a handful of cases of at least two LLCs that look to be controlled by the same interests making separate donations. This arrangement is a way around the $1,000 donation limit. For instance Prince Const /WMS JV Deal, Prince Construction Co / WM Scholosser JV, and WM Schlosser Co Inc -- all located at 2400 51st Place, Hyattsville, MD -- each donated $1,000. WM Scholosser is a construction company with a number of projects in DC.
Also, in at least one case -- Premium Title + Escrow, LLC -- the limit appears to have been exceeded. Biddle's report really gets interesting on the expenditure side, which makes clear the ties to Kwame Brown. Brown's father, Marshall, was paid $5,000 as a consultant. In addition, Michael Price, Kwame Brown's former press secretary, is working for Biddle. The other interesting tie is with Darryl Rose who has been Yvette Alexander's campaign manager and has also done work for Kwame Brown. Rose is currently a paid member of Wal-Marts local "consulting team" and held a fundraiser for Biddle among other things. |
jsteele
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Some notes from Bryan Weaver's finance report. He raised roughly $21,000. He had only one corporate donation, for $1,000. Most of his donations were small. In addition to the aforementioned contribution, only 7 others are for the maximum $1,000. However, I believe one of those has been entered twice. So, only 6 individuals have likely donated the maximum.
The report lists 138 donations. A small number of people have made more than one donation, so the number of donors is a little smaller. Nearly 100 individual donors are DC residents. One of the most interesting names to pop up was that of Donna Watts, a former girlfriend of Marion Barry. Weaver has spent about $1,500, leaving him with about $20,000 in cash on hand. |
takoma
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Concerning Jeff's reports on the finances of Orange, Biddle, and Weaver: Wow!
Thanks for putting in the time and effort, Jeff. I have been to the website to look at the reports, but my eyes glazed over. |
jsteele
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Thanks Takoma! I actually find this stuff interesting.
Now, for Josh Lopez. He raised $24,678.00 of which $8,092.00 is from businesses. Just over 100 DC residents contributed to him. Contributions of interest are $1,000 from Banneker Ventures and another $1,000 from Omar Karim. As many will remember, Karim is Adrian Fenty's frat brother who managed to get large unsolicited contracts for his business, Banneker Ventures. Also, two $50.00 contributions from Kamili Anderson, a candidate for the Board of Education. Lopez has $19,996.22 in cash on hand. |
jsteele
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Now for Patrick Mara. He raised a total of $32,194.00. Only two of Mara's contributions -- each for the $1,000 were from corporations. Another $1,000 was from the DC Republican PAC. Another $1,500 was from a Trust and a Partnership. Of the 103 contributions Mara received, only six were from outside DC. Mara has $29,376.97 in cash on hand. There's not much of interest that I can identify from this report. Mara received $1,000 from the widow of DC parking mogul Bud Doggett and another $1,000 from the family trust. Combined with another $1,000 from Atlantic Parking, Mara seems to be in pretty good with the parking industry.
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jsteele
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Today the Board of Elections held public hearings regarding challenges to the nominating petitions of two candidates -- Bryan Weaver and Patrick Mara. Weaver's petitions had been challenged by the Biddle campaign. Weaver has charged that the challenge was aimed at diverting his campaign resources rather than an honest belief that the petitions were invalid. This charge was supported by the fact that the Biddle campaign had challenged Weaver's wife's signature, Kwame Brown's brother signature, several blank lines, and even Biddle's own signature. The Board had originally found most of Weaver's signatures were valid, but required him to obtain roughly 50 change of address cards, which Weaver did. Minutes before the hearing today, the challenge was withdrawn. We can conclude that Weaver is correct that Biddle mainly wanted to waste Weaver's campaign resources and the mission was accomplished. But, regardless, Weaver is on the ballot.
Mara's campaign run into an unexpected problem. The Board had initially ruled that Mara had enough signatures. However, today the Board announced that while investigating the challenge, they had come the the conclusion that many of Mara's signatures were forged. This charge is complicated in that the Board is supposed to consist of three members -- two Democrats and one Republican. However, there has not been a Republican member for quite some time. Fenty had nominated a candidate, but his confirmation was denied by the Council. Gray has not nominated anyone. Mara is the only Republican in the race. The optics of a panel missing its Republican member tossing a Republican off the ballot will not be good and are likely not to go over well in Congress. A resolution to this matter is still pending. There was no progress regarding Jacque Patterson who has still not secured a place on the ballot. |
Anonymous
I could be wrong (should go without saying, but it doesn't hurt to remind everyone), but I think the rule is that all three cannot come from the same party. The objection to the last group of signatures was brought up after the end of the challenge period. If he's not on the ballot, the election will probably be under litigation, and an injunction would not surprise me. Definitely a hellpot full of trouble to keep a guy off the ballot when his party is such a small minority in the City. If he can prove that 12 of the 194 questioned signatures are valid, he's on the ballot -- that does not look like a hard job, although being told on Friday to do it by Monday makes it a bit trickier. The irony here is that I would never have given a thought to voting for him before all this caused me to take a closer look. I would not be shocked if the publicity ends up getting him elected, especially since the guy is as liberal as any Democrat on the social issues. He just might pull a Catania.. |
Anonymous
Jeff, I really respect you and this blog (I practically live on it), but you are misinformed about how campaign law works at the detriment to Sekou Biddle, who is a good person getting a bad rap here. Petitioning is an important first step for candidates to prove that #1) they have some base of support; and #2) they can follow the letter of the law. The law leaves it up to the candidates to police one another in petitioning, and if they didn't do that any joe schmo could get on a ballot by getting each of his friends to forge a bunch of signatures from voter rolls, or by trolling around the malls in Virginia and getting the signatures of people who don't even vote in DC. Challenging signatures is an important part of the process to hold candidates accountable. It is completely unfair for you to question the motives of candidates who do it. That aside, the fact that Weaver had to return change of address cards means that the challenges WERE valid - the people that signed the petition were not registered to vote at that address. He fixed the problem and the Biddle campaign withdrew their challenge because it was resolved, not because they were wasting his time. As for the rest of the stuff from Mara's signatures, not only does DC require the signatures on petitions to be from registered DC voters, but the person witnessing the signatures is held to the same standard. The Board's INITIAL reviewing of the Mara signatures did not address the issue of the witnesses, only the issue of the signatures (it also didn't address forgeries). They then gave each candidate time to review their findings and challenge those results - when the second round was reviewed they discovered the forgeries and the full pages of petitions signed by invalid witnesses (hence the challenges to some well known names). I find it upsetting that you are more upset about Biddle challenging the signatures than you are that Mara forged signatures. I am upset by how many conclusions you jump to about the integrity of the Board, the integrity of the process, and the integrity of the challenge, when you have so little information on how it all works. How can you say the Board is corrupting the process when they initially ruled Mara in? And as for the Board and the Biddle campaign knowing about the second challenge before Mara, that's because the Biddle campaign made the challenge to the Board, then the Board notified Mara, as per the law. |
Anonymous
| Sorry, PP here. I also wanted to point out that over 40% of Mara's initial signatures were ruled invalid by the board. That's almost 2500 bad signatures before you even count the forgeries!! |
Anonymous
| Sorry, last update from PP here. I just read the Debonis blog that said the Biddle campaign didn't make the second challenge to the board - the board notified the campaigns of the challenges simultaneously. |