City Hall Hustle: Behind the Numbers: Who's Still Got Cash?

Obfuscation abounds in campaign finance reports. Even the name of the latest round, the "30th Day Before Election" report, is somewhat of a misnomer: Sure, it falls one month before election day, but it's really about two weeks from when the polls first open for early voting. The Hustle crunched the numbers a few pages over ("On the Campaign Trail," p.20), but while that says a lot, it doesn't say everything.

Maybe the biggest story is the nearly $60,000 loan Lee Leffingwell wrote to himself, making the amount he's loaned his campaign $100,000. Leffingwell's campaign calls it common in elections, pointing to a similarly sized loan Will Wynn made himself back in the day (in the midst of another fundraising-challenging downturn, it should be noted). Neverthe­less, Leffingwell's fundraising numbers were completely swallowed by opponent Brewster McCracken's, $128,277 to $214,039. To counter the meme that McCracken's windfall is the product of well-connected, deep-pocketed, nefarious sorts, his team points out that McCracken also leads in the total number of donors over Leffingwell by some 900 to 500.

But it also has to be acknowledged that without those nefarious attorneys, engineers, and developers (Endeavor Real Estate, Lincoln Property Group, Armbrust & Brown, et al.), neither candidate would have much money, because it's exactly those types of people who donate to campaigns – as they've done here in scads. As McCracken spokesman Colin Rowan wrote the Hustle: "Brewster has roughly 85 donations of $700 ($350 per person in a couple) and 315 of $350. That's 485 max donors, which is slightly less than half of all donors. Lee has 65 $700 donors and 140 $350 donors – roughly 270 maxed donors ... just over half of his donors are max givers. So, even though the math is crude, it looks like roughly the same percentage of Lee/Brewster givers are max givers."

Leffingwell consultant Mark Nathan qualifies that, noting in an e-mail: "Lee didn't collect his first contribution until six weeks after Brewster. As of the reporting deadline, over the ten weeks he had been in the race, Lee raised about $12,800 per week, from roughly 50 donors per week (128K in all in that period). Over the 16 weeks Brewster had been in the race, he raised about $14,800 per week (236K total), from roughly 55 donors per week. It's true that overall Brewster has raised more on average, from more people, but not by much."

If McCracken leads in the money race, he's also burning through it at a slightly faster clip. I&O Communications, the public relations firm directing his campaign, consumed nearly $45,000 between the end of January and late March. However, there's another eyebrow-raising expense: two $5,000 payments to Stanford Campaigns, the new opposition research shop of Jason Stanford. Stanford made news last election year when he left the poorly funded campaign of Jason Meeker, then running against Leffingwell, to join an ostensibly separate anti-Leffingwell/pro-Meeker campaign funded by a wealthy third party, raising questions about campaign coordination in the process. After the election, McCracken told the Chronicle that he was "really displeased" his friend Stanford partook in the campaign and said, "I'll never work with the guy." Now spokesman Rowan says bygones are bygones. "Jason and Brewster are good friends. Friends disagree, they work it out, and they get over it. That's what happened here. Jason's one of the best in the business and has long relationships with several folks on Brewster's campaign team. We're all glad he's on board."

The 30-day reports also opened up the low road in the painstakingly civil Place 1 race. The Perla Cavazos campaign wondered aloud why Chris Riley, who outraised Cavazos and leads with nearly twice the amount of cash on hand, was missing about $9,600 – if you added his fundraising numbers and subtracted the expenses. Riley's campaign countered by directing them to the form at the back of the report detailing reimbursable expenses candidate Riley paid for himself, including nearly $9,000 in yard signs and other expenses. Calling it "a pointless distraction," Riley wrote the Hustle: "People want us to be focused on the issues that matter to them. ... The question is: who will do a better job of helping Austin rise to the challenges we're facing? The question is not: is there a non-issue with your paperwork?" (Still, Riley's people were not above pointing out that Cavazos was a day late in filing her campaign finance report, a slight if embarrassing error while the economy's on everyone's minds. Cavazos' crew blamed the mistake on a "computer error.")

Candidates drop their next disclosures May 1, eight days to election day. Then we'll know who's spending what on that most trenchant of political communiqués: TV ads. Ain't democracy grand?

Even grander: The Austin Chronicle presents The Hustle for Mayor, Tuesday, April 21, 7pm, at the Mohawk, 912 Red River. E-mail candidate questions to hustle@austinchronicle.com, or Tweet them at www.twitter.com/cityhallhustle.