Steve Filson's Fundraising Hits a Wall

A couple of weeks ago I posted a piece looking at a quote from a small district newspaper about Steve Filson’s fundraising last quarter. It raised the possibility that Filson’s fourth quarter fundraising had not been as strong as we might have assumed given his performance in the third quarter. There is now evidence that Steve Filson did even worse than the quote led me to believe. Here is the quote I was responding to (emphasis mine):

Filson’s web site said that he had about $100,000 cash on hand at the end of the September campaign reporting period. He said that there has not been much change in the fourth quarter of 2005.

Here was the meat of my response:

If Filson has not appreciably increased his cash on hand he’s in trouble. It either means that Steve Filson raised a lot of money but spent too much of it or it means that Steve Filson did not raise much money. Neither prospects put Filson in a very positive light. Now the fourth quarter reports are finally coming out and we can see preliminary evidence that Steve Filson underperformed tremendously. The FEC website that makes these types of reports available does not have Filson’s report up yet, but the FEC has published the aggregate numbers.

From the site, we see that Steve Filson ended the year having raised $155,823, of which only $54,906 was raised this past quarter. This essentially puts him on pace with Jerry McNerney in terms of the money raised this past quarter. However, what makes this more problematic for Filson is the fact that he reported spending $53,324 last quarter, which means that he only increased his cash on hand (COH) by $1,582. Also, a lot of political observers look at something called the “burn rate” which is the percentage of incoming money spent rather than saved. I have seen people on other blogs say that a burn rate of over 30% in the fourth quarter is a problem, or at least a red flag. Regardless, nobody would say that a burn rate of over 97% at this stage in the campaign is warranted. Filson, put simply, is spending way too much money given what he is raising.

But the deeper issue is that Filson has touted his superior fundraising ability. It was, when he first started running, one of the primary reasons he gave for Democrats to vote for him. And even McNerney’s strongest supporters never suspected that Filson could not live up to his third quarter fundraising. The debate was always whether Filson’s fundraising skills would allow him to overcome McNerney’s grassroots base. Nobody ever really considered the possibility that Filson would be unable to significantly out-fundraise Jerry McNerney. Even after I published my piece a couple of weeks ago, I got a couple of people “in the know” pooh-poohing the quote, assuring me that it must have been a misunderstanding on the part of the reporter. Well, it looks like the quote was very much accurate. And it looks like Steve Filson is in trouble.

I’m still waiting for McNerney’s numbers to show up on the FEC website. We know he has raised over $100,000 based on the statements of his campaign manager, but we don’t know much else. I assume that McNerney’s COH is going to be less than Filson’s, so Filson will still probably retain the absolute advantage in terms of fundraising. But I still expect Filson’s star to be seriously diminished once people realize that he did so poorly in the fourth quarter. And I still cannot get over the fact that he spent so much money given his receipts. I mean, what has he been doing to warrant those expenditures? Is it just the expense of retaining all of his consultants? If so, it’s unsustainable and something big will have to change.

UPDATE: Hank Shaw at the Stockton Record had an article
today that touches on this issue. Shaw writes (emphasis mine):

Filson, who enjoys support of the Washington D.C. party establishment, leads the intramural money chase with $102,000. But McNerney - who ran against Pombo in 2004 - has nearly $80,000, according to his campaign manager. [Ed Note: The last figure appears to be inaccurate. Or at least, McNerney only had around $69,000 COH at the end of the quarter. It's possible the $80,000 figure represents McNerney's current COH. It's also possible that the campaign manager just messed up.]

Neither Thomas' nor McNerney's campaign finance report were available Tuesday night.

Part of Filson's viability has hinged on his ability to raise the money needed to beat Pombo, who as House Resources Committee chairman can tap energy, Indian and agricultural interests better than most.

So McNerney's closing the gap comes as something of a surprise. Filson dismissed it as a blip and said he's "planning to raise some eyebrows" in his next report, due in April.

"We knew it'd be a really tough quarter with the special election and the holidays," Filson said.

Here's the thing. McNerney was almost certainly hurt more by the special election than Filson. McNerney's supporters at the grassroots have been in one campaign or another for two years, and the special election consumed the attention of most active Democrats in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

I can tell you that McNerney has the support of the folks who did the special election precinct work for the Democratic clubs in Berkeley and Oakland and the people who coordinated the same thing for all of Contra Costa County. McNerney's current scheduler (Vicki) was a volunteer in the main Alameda County Alliance for a Better California office. She was in the ABC office over thirty hours a week for over six weeks before the special election. None of the Filson supporters I have met had any leadership role in the special election. And I know that, for example, Filson's Field Director spent election day of the special election going to a concert instead of helping get out the vote. I don't think she had been hired by Filson yet, but the point is that Filson gets his support from people who were a lot less active in the special election than McNerney's supporters. So to claim that the special election got in his way is a cop out.

And I think that McNerney's supporters will see this as an opportunity to rally around McNerney and flex their grassroots muscle. At the very least, McNerney's supporter will be energized, and I don't see how Filson's supporters will be anything other than dispirited.

I can tell you that unless Steve Filson does in the coming quarter what he should have done this past quarter, his campaign will be dead in the water. And even if he does raise a lot of money, there is absolutely no way that he can spend as much money this coming quarter as he did this quarter. After all, raising money does not matter if you're spending it almost as quickly as your taking it in.

Tags: CA-11, Richard Pombo, Steve Filson, Jerry McNerney, FEC, fundraising