While I usually leave everything related to the 3rd District, Adrian Smith, or Western Nebraska to our wonderful friends over at SmithWatch… I just couldn’t help but point out the obvious (well obvious if you’re a geek like me who like to read FEC Fundraising Numbers).
Adrian Smith, the brand-new Republican congressman from the 3rd, just can’t seem to get very good at fundraising. You see, when running for Congress lots of people want to give you money; especially when you’re a Republican in a very Republican district like Smith was. Which was why it was suprising that Smith wasn’t able to raise much much more than he did last time around. That left many of us to speculate that he just isn’t very good at raising money.
Now that doesn’t make him a bad congressman (if you want to know why he’s a bad congressman, just spend ten minutes over at SmithWatch yourself)… I can think of a number of Democratic candidates who weren’t very good at raising money but who I love dearly.
But it could be a problem for Adrian if he still can’t raise any money. You see, when you’re a first term congressman people really love to give you money. Now that Smith is in Congress he should be able to raise lots of easy dollars every two years from PACs of companies affected by the committee he sits on. The corrupt way this works is one of the big reasons Jim Esch pledged not to take PAC money last time around… but I digress.
But in the last quarter, Smith only raised $104,000… not counting his $30k in debt left over from the last campaign. That means Smith’s Cash On Hand (CoH) is only about $65,000… compare that to Lee Terry’s $215k CoH.
So is Scott Kleeb going to step up and run again? Well, Scott still has nearly as much in the bank as Smith did, at $64k.
Run Scott! Run!
Well, it’s $94K CoH, technically. I imagine his staff from the campaign is going to want their bonuses soon enough, though. Still, Kleeb is in a remarkably strong position against Smith despite not raising a dime in the past quarter. (In fact, he actually raised -$50, issuing a refund of a $50 contribution).
I initially thought, after 2006, that Kleeb couldn’t run for this seat again, that his best opportunity to beat Smith was in 2006. But I underestimated just how woefully bad of a Congressman Adrian Smith would be.
Take a look at the skewed numbers – just how much money relative to individual contributions Adrian Smith is getting from PACs.
From individuals: $26,661 (almost all of it from big checkwriters).
From PACs: $69,328
He got $2,000 from Nelnet (reward for a job well done?) and $5514 from the RNC.
Oh, and here’s a good catch Ryan made at the NNN…
The late, great Jim Exon has $113,911 cash-on-hand, more than Smith.
Looking through a few more reports, here’s one that is just nuts:
Pete Ricketts has $7.6 million in debt.
the amazing thing as the regular media in Omaha doesn’t do these stories or even check these facts.
OWH… where art thou?
College students blogging in our spare time figured out that Terry was running for reelection and not the senate before the OWH with it’s two full time reports dedicated to this stuff and a staff of around 100.
WTF?
Smith Watch digs up a few more details from the reports… I’ve decided that we’re all a bunch of nerds about this stuff. Which is all fine, because that just makes us good at what we do.
I think ricketts has so much debt because it looked better for him to run his campaign into debt and then pay it off himself later on, than for him to write another 7 million dollar check to himself at the last minute (and thus generate more negative news stories about trying to buy the election)
so that means Ricketts probably spent 7 million MORE dollars of his own money on his race than we all thought he did.