by Tony Petrangelo

Oct 19, 2013, 11:00 AM

The Weekly Wrap 10-19

♣ Third quarter fundraising numbers are in, but the FEC’s website is still screwed up from the shutdown, so I’m going to crib this info from DailyKos Elections (all monies in thousands of dollars):

A few notes:

In CD6, Tom Emmer has been raising the most money, while Phil Krinkie and Rhonda Sivarajah have countered by loaning themselves a significant chunk of cash, leaving John Pederson as the odd man out, so to speak. Pederson has raised as much as both Sivarajah and Krinkie combined in contributions from people other then himself, but he still finds himself way back in the cash-on-hand column.

In CD8, Rick Nolan got out-raised by challenger Stewart Mills and they have very similar cash-on-hand totals. If his 2012 campaign is any guide, Rick Nolan will not be placing a high priority on fundraising, so ti wouldn’t really surprise me if this is an ongoing trend. The key for Nolan won’t necessarily be to out-raise Mills, but primarily to stay competitive with him in fundraising.

♣ In Senate fundraising news:

DFL Sen. Al Franken’s re-election campaign built on his large base of supporters to raise more than $2 million in the quarter ending Sept. 30 and now has nearly $3.9 million in the bank.

Franken’s campaign manager, Matt Burgess, noted that Franken had more than 37,000 individual donors in the last quarter including nearly 21,000 new donors, 97 percent of whom gave less than $100. Of the four Republicans who have entered the race, only businessman Mike McFadden has announced his fundraising, drawing more than $700,000 in the last quarter with $1.2 million cash on hand.

Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, said that she raised $120,000 from roughly 650 donors in her first eight weeks of fundraising for her U.S. Senate campaign.

♣ And in Gubernatorial fundraising news:

New financial information from Gov. Mark Dayton’s campaign committee shows  the DFLer raised $379,019 during July, August and September.

The voluntary disclosure today also shows receipts from January through September totaled $628,457. Expenditures and disbursements for the same period were $263,441.

The Quarterly deadline is a federal deadline. People running for state offices, like Governor, aren’t required to file quarterly disclosures, Mark Dayton does this voluntarily.

♣ In the ongoing case of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight:

Republican congressional candidate Tom Emmer on Tuesday reported $850 in debt for “advertising” to his office remodeler.

He had cut a video praising the firm, Integrity Exteriors and Remodelers, standing in front of a massive campaign sign. The firm then ran the video on television, which could run afoul of campaign finance laws forbidding direct corporate contributions.

The ad was quickly pulled from the air but the Emmer campaign paid for the cost of airing it, said David FitzSimmons, a state representative from Albertville and an Emmer advisor.

“It is the full cost of everything associated with it,” FitzSimmons said. Asked if the campaign consulted campaign finance experts about the payment or expected payment, he said he was done to resolve the problem as they were advised to do.

Of course FitzSimmons was involved in this, I wouldn’t expect anything less. And if history is any guide, it won’t be long until the Draz is put on retainer as well.

♣ My weekly Friday appearance on The Daily Report (the most generically named radio show in the Twin Cities!) is embedded below. For those of you who have been following my recent Ranked Choice Voting posts, in the audio below you will find, maybe somewhat surprisingly, an impassioned defense of at least one aspect of Ranked Choice Voting. This comes after I critique an aspect of Ranked Choice Voting of course, but that much should be expected of me at this point.