Texas 2012 Senate Race Update: Final Q1 Fundraising Reports

The FEC finally has fundraising totals for all the major declared candidates in the 2012 Texas Senate race. Ranked from most to least, they are:

  1. Tom Leppert: Raised $2,690,081 (including a $1,600,000 loan) and still has $2,592,219 on hand
  2. Ted Cruz: Raised $1,013,060 (including a $70,000 loan) and has $965,153 on hand
  3. Roger Williams: Raised $598,470 (including a $250,000 loan) and has $1,250,300 on hand
  4. Michael Williams: Raised $418,619 (including $132,160 in loans) and has $369,369 on hand
  5. Elizabeth Ames Jones: Raised $122,185 and has $128,541 on hand

Despite later starts than their opponents, Leppert and Cruz are clearly setting the pace here. Both seem to be raising money and campaigning hard, and Cruz has generated a significant swell of grass-roots enthusiasm. If they can keep this up, both will be serious contenders to make the runoff in March, with or without Lt. Governor David Dewhurst entering the race.

Roger Williams has raised enough to stay in the game, but despite the endorsement of former President George H. W. Bush (a legendary rainmaker with a well-oiled fundraising machine), there’s no sign that the Bush dynasty has put the full force of their fundraising prowess behind him. He’ll need to knock out Leppert (or Dewhurst, if he runs) to make the runoff, and so far he shows no signs of doing it.

Michael Williams has also raised enough to stay in the game, and probably has grassroots enthusiasm second only to Cruz, but he needs to pick up the pace if he wants to remain competitive. The current pace isn’t going to get it done, and he can’t make the runoff unless Cruz slips.

Ever since I posted on Elizabeth Ames Jones’ paltry fundraising efforts, I’ve been trying to figure out a reason for her to stay in the race. I haven’t come up with one. If there’s any significant enthusiasm for her campaign out among Texas Republicans, it takes more sensitive scientific instruments than I possess to measure. I don’t see her candidacy filling any sort of ideological void, and the sort of people who would vote for her solely based on her sex are not the same people who vote in a Republican primary. While there’s a lot of time left in the campaign, unless she can figure out how to make some serious noise (say, launching a series of non-stop attacks on Leppert for being a secret RINO) she should probably get out of the race.

A few other fundraising tidbits gleaned from the FEC reports:

  • Sean Hubbard, thus far the only declared Democratic candidate, raised $6,511.
  • Among the longshots, Andrew Castanuela ($262) and Lela Pettinger ($150) are hardly setting the world on fire, but Magnolia funeral home-owner Glenn Addison (who’s running on a social conservative platform) managed to pull in $20,432 (even if $6,877 was in loans), or about one sixth what Jones, a statewide office holder who has been running for about a year, pulled in over the same period of time. For someone with no real chance of winning the nomination, that’s pretty impressive. Mr. Addison won’t be the next U.S. Senator from Texas, but he might do very well in a local race should he choose to run for one in 2014.

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    This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 27th, 2011 at 1:14 PM and is filed under Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    7 Responses to “Texas 2012 Senate Race Update: Final Q1 Fundraising Reports”

    1. Holly Hansen says:
      April 27, 2011 at 5:21 PM

      Thanks for keeping tabs on this race; great information!

    2. The Ted Cruz Campaign On His Fundraising Quarter « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      May 5, 2011 at 6:19 PM

      […] press release from the Ted Cruz campaign (penned by J2Strategies consultant Jason Johnson) on those Q1 Texas Senate Race fundraising totals makes interesting reading. The classic lawyer advice is “If the facts are on your side, pound […]

    3. More Texas Senate Race Fundraising Nuggets and Race Tidbits « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      May 5, 2011 at 9:04 PM

      […] the aggregate FEC totals have been up for a little while, the FEC has finally put up the lists of individual contributors to […]

    4. The Washington Post Discovers Ted Cruz « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      June 17, 2011 at 7:44 PM

      […] suggests that there are, in fact, better-funded candidates. Leppert only has more money on hand thanks to a $1.6 million loan (discounting loans, Leppert pulled in slightly over $1 million, and Cruz pulled in slightly under […]

    5. Texas Senate Race Updates for July 19, 2011 « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      July 19, 2011 at 1:40 PM

      […] totals are up, and it seems to me that something awful screwy is going on there. Remember, in Q1, Leppert raised $2.6 million, but $1.6 million of that was in the form of a personal loan to his […]

    6. Leppert Raises $640,000 in Q3, Tosses in Another $500,000 of His Own Money « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      October 14, 2011 at 5:53 PM

      […] it’s slightly less than the $750,000 in contributions he raised in Q2, which was, in turn, less than the $1 million in contributions and $1.6 million in self-funding he raised in […]

    7. Leppert Has Poor Fundraising Quarter, Releases Taxes « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      February 1, 2012 at 11:40 AM

      […] Q3, which was down from the $750,000 he raised from donors in Q2, which, in turn, was down from the $1 million from donors he raised in Q1 of 2011, when he first jumped into the race. That can’t be an encouraging […]

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