The Weekly Wrap 8-5
♣ The deadline for filing 15 day pre-primary reports was on Monday. The congressional candidates had just submitted filings for the FEC, at the end of June, so these numbers reflect only July 1 through the deadline.
First Congressional District
Allen Quist (GOP): Raised $18,800 – including $10,000 he loaned to the campaign – spent $66,135 and closed the reporting period with $117,878 in the bank.
Mike Parry (GOP): Raised $8,890, spent $11,701 and has $27,797 on hand.
Tim Walz (incumbent, DFL): Raised $27,845, spent $28,611 and had about $807,909 in his war chest.
Eighth Congressional District
Rick Nolan (DFL): Raised $27,000, spent $33,000 and has $87,000 cash on hand.
Tarryl Clark (DFL): Raised $65,500, spent $225,000 spent, mostly on advertising, and $98,000 cash on hand.
Jeff Anderson (DFL): Raised $8,000, spent $19,000 and $7,000 cash on hand.
Chip Cravaack (incumbent, GOP): Raised $59,000, spent $39,000 and has $916,000 cash on hand.
The big news in these numbers, at least as far as I’m concerned, are contained in the filings of the legislative candidates. On Thursday I went over the money raised by candidates in Senate primaries, I’ll discuss their House counterparts on Monday, and get to the full Legislature after that.
In the meantime, PiM has a nice overview of some of the key races.
♣ Not surprisingly it appears as though there was an effort by at least some Republicans to circumvent the states public campaign financing system.
The scam goes like this, a direct quote from GOP endorsed candidate Brandon Anderson’s fundraising plea:
So, send me $50 and I’ll send you $50. Or if you have a spouse, go ahead and send $100 and I’ll return the same.
It reminds me of a bit from Saturday Night Live.
How do you make money doing this? The answer is simple, volume.
Anyway, nice work here by Eric Pusey in breaking this story.
♣ The Kurt Bills Senate campaign has been touting their new ad that strikes a familiar tone to, or rather, directly lifts from, an old Paul Wellstone ad.
This on the heels of an ad that strikes a familiar tone to, or rather, directly lifts from, The Twilight Zone.
Maybe Bills should be spending more time on things that will actually help his campaign though, you know, like raising money.
As of July 25, Bills, a Republican, reported having just $5,841 in the bank. His opponent, DFL U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, has more than 900 times as much cash for her campaign — nearly $5.4 million.
Just for some context, most serious legislative candidates in the state have more than that in the bank.
To be fair, Kurt Bills is the victim of an arbitrary endpoints kind of thing here, as the day of the deadline he was in DC for a fundraiser with the elder and younger Paul, Ron and Rand.
But regardless of that, the fact that at any time in the middle of summer in a race for the United State Senate he only had $5,000 in the bank lets you know how tenuous his money position is.
♣ Big Dog Alert!
♣ No-cute-dog-related-nickname-yet Alert!
♣ And for the MN-8 trifecta, we have the notoriously tone deaf Emily’s list, on behalf of Tarryl Clark, sending out mailers attacking Rick Nolan for not being sufficiently pro-choice, much to the delight of Chip Cravaack I’m sure.
Jeff Anderson is also still in this race, but the fact that he was neither the recipient of any big endorsements or any substantial attacks tells you all you need to know about the state of his campaign.
♣ I’m not sure how much it matters, my suspicion is very little, but soon to be former Senator John Harrington endorsed Robert Humphrey to fill his seat. Humphrey is facing Tom Dimond and Foung Hawj in the primary on the 14th.
♣ Minnesota is apparently part of a $23 million, 11 state ad buy from the nefarious Koch brothers backed group, Americans for Prosperity.
While Minnesota may not be towards the top of anyone’s list of swing states, money spent in the Twins Cities market has the added bonus of hitting western Wisconsin as well, a state which is higher up on the swing state target list. So it’s dual use money.
♣ Our Vote Our Future has tapped SEIU (Service Employees International Union) Director of Field Information Services, Luchelle Stevens, as it’s campaign manager.
♣ On Tuesday the Minnesota Supreme Court heard oral arguments about whether or not Secretary of State, and Champion of all Minnesota Voters, Mark Ritchie, has the power to change the titles of amendments passed by the legislature.
As you may or may not recall, Ritchie changed the titles of both amendments and supporters of those amendments promptly filed lawsuits claiming that he does not have such power.
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling before the end of the month.
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