Which at-large campaigns have the most in-county donors?

A few days ago, Adam Pagnucco published an interesting article on Seventh State summarizing the campaign finance reports of fifteen candidates for the council at-large seats. Below is a chart illustrating the total funds raised by each campaign, listed in order.

Total funds raised this campaign cycle (including public financing received to date and requested but not yet deposited) by leading campaigns for County Council At-Large. Adapted from Seventh State. Click for full size.

The main takeaway I got from that article was that Will Jawando, Evan Glass, Hans Riemer, Bill Conway, Hoan Dang, and Gabe Albornoz have far out-raised the other candidates, and therefore they might have the best odds of winning the election.

Pagnucco added a disclaimer that “the best-financed candidates don’t always win” and suggested that two of the lesser-financed  candidates—Jill Ortman-Fouse and Chris Wilhelm—have a chance if their bases of support are mobilized at the polls. In an earlier post, Pagnucco also described the possibility of candidate Marilyn Balcombe attracting enough Upcounty voters where “she might be able to fly under the radar to victory”.

Who cares how much money the candidates have?

While it is interesting to know who has raised the most and who has the most cash on-hand, I think it’s more interesting to know which candidates have the most individual in-county donors.

Why? In a one-person, one-vote system, I’d imagine that a candidate with 150 $10 donors would have better odds at winning than a candidate with ten $150 donors.

I asked Adam Pagnucco on Facebook which candidates had the most in-county individual donors, and he responded that he was no longer tracking that information due to the amount of time required. So I decided to take on the task myself…

Methods

I downloaded the campaign contribution data from the Maryland Campaign Reporting Information System, geocoded the addresses to correct typos/errors and standardize the address format, consolidated multiple campaign contributions where the name and address were identical, and sorted out which addresses were within Montgomery County. The results are below.

Exact numbers are not posted below because I do not want to give the impression that the analysis is extremely precise: there might be a slight margin of error (I estimate less than ±2%) due to typos and discrepancies in the campaign contribution data, which may have led to a few instances where repeated donations by a single individual was counted as two separate donors.

Note: Similar to the analysis in Seventh State, I looked only at candidates who have qualified for matching funds in the public financing system or have raised at least $100,000 in traditional financing. I excluded Charles Barkley because he doesn’t have as many in-county donors nor has been campaigning as actively as the other candidates, as reported by the Bethesda Beat. This analysis takes time, and I wanted to use my time wisely on the candidates that have the highest odds of winning.

Who has the most in-county donors?

With nearly 1,000 unique individual in-county donors, Evan Glass has convinced more Montgomery County residents to chip in to his campaign than any of the other candidates.

The chart below shows the number of in-county donors for each candidate, presented in the same order as the first chart (total funds raised this cycle).

Number of unique individual donors residing in Montgomery County for leading campaigns for County Council At-Large. Data from MCRIS. Click for full size.

A few things jumped out to me immediately:

  1. In addition to Glass, Jawando and Riemer are leading not only in fundraising, but also in number of in-county donors. These three appear to have very good odds at winning the primary.
  2. Ashwani Jain has the second-highest number of in-county donors. This was completely unexpected for me, as he is not participating in the public financing system. Jain very well could be a dark horse in this crowded race.
  3. Although Conway, Dang, and Albornoz are doing well in fundraising, they each have about 300 fewer donors than the four candidates listed above. While 300 doesn’t sound like much, in a crowded race like this one, it’s easy to imagine that the winner could be decided by a few hundred votes.
  4. Conway in particular appears to have relatively few unique individual donors compared to the other three candidates that have raised over $300,000. As noted later in this article, this is due to the high percentage of his donors that maxed-out on their contributions.
  5. Although Chris Wilhelm ranks in the middle of the pack in terms of fundraising, he has the fifth-highest number of individual in-county donors. With the strong (and somewhat unique) endorsement of the teachers’ union, Wilhelm has a decent shot at beating out his better-funded opponents.
  6. In addition to lagging behind in terms of dollars raised (as noted in Adam Pagnucco’s commentary), the female candidates are also lagging behind in number of donors. Personally, I find this somewhat unfortunate and hope that at least one or two of the top four female candidates in this cycle (Meitiv, Balcombe, Brooks, and Ortman-Fouse) win an at-large seat on the county council this year.

Who has the big donors vs. the small donors?

The public financing system allows candidates to receive between $1 and $150 from in-county residents. Some candidates are relying heavily on donors that can give the maximum amount, while others are aiming for more modest $20 or $50 donations.

The chart below shows the total number of in-county donors for each candidate segregated by contribution size.

Number of unique individual in-county donors for leading campaigns for County Council At-Large, segregated by size of donor’s aggregate contribution during this campaign cycle. Data from MCRIS. Click for full size.

Here is the same chart, but expressed as a percentage of total donors to a campaign.

Fraction of unique Montgomery County individual donors for each campaign, segregated by size of donor’s aggregate contribution during this campaign cycle. Data from MCRIS. Click for full size.

As shown in the chart above, Wilhelm, Meitiv, and Brooks have relatively more small donors than the other candidates—nearly 40% of their donors contributed less than $30. On the other end of the spectrum, 55% of Conway’s donors contributed $150, the maximum amount. The candidates with the next-highest fraction of maxed-out donors are Albornoz (39%), Riemer (36%), Jawando (34%), Siddique (32%), and Dang (32%).

Publicly-financed candidates with the lowest fraction of maxed-out donors are Brooks (19%), Meitiv (21%), Wilhelm (22%), Ortman-Fouse (23%), Grimes (26%), and Glass (26%).

Jain is a special case: 71% of his in-county donors gave less than $30. In fact, 56% of his donors chipped in $5 or less. But because he is participating in traditional financing, Jain is also allowed to receive up to $6,000 from individuals, and he did! However, only 10% of his in-county donors contributed more $150 or more.

Also of note is that Jain’s campaign has not accepted any direct contributions from businesses—the only contributions listed on his filing that were not made by individuals were $1,000 from Opportunity First PAC, $500 from SEIU Local 500 PAC, and $150 from the campaign of Bill Romani, who ran for state delegate in 2014.

Balcombe also is relying on traditional financing: 35% of her in-county individual donors have contributed between $150 and $6,000. Note: “Individual donors” do not include contributions from self-funding, businesses, organizations, PACs, or other campaign committees—those will be presented in a later chart.

For several campaigns, a small number of donors appeared to have donated more than $150, the maximum allowable amount. I’m not sure what happened in those instances—it’s possible that any excess contributions were returned and the return was reported as an expenditure (this is a guess).

The next chart shows the total dollar amount of in-county individual campaign contributions segregated by contribution size.

Total dollar amount of contributions from in-county individual contributions, segregated by size of donor’s aggregate contribution during this campaign cycle. Data from MCRIS. Click for full size.

As evidenced by the large red bars in the chart above, candidates can raise a lot more money when they are not limited by the $150 cap imposed in the public-financing system!

This limitation is outweighed by the 4-to-1 match provided by the county for the first $50 received from each county resident (contributions above $50 are matched at a lower rate). As a result, several of the campaigns participating in public financing have out-raised their traditionally-financed opponents, as shown in the second-to-last chart below.

What about other sources of funding?

In addition to receiving donations from in-county residents, candidates participating in the public financing system can also receive money from themselves and their spouse and out-of-county residents. Dollars from those contributions are not matched.

Below are two charts showing the number of individual donors segregated by location; first as the number of donors and second as the fraction of all individual donors.

Number of unique individual donors for leading campaigns for County Council At-Large, segregated by location of donor’s reported address. Data from MCRIS. Click for full size.
Fraction of unique individual donors for each campaign, segregated by donor’s reported address. Data from MCRIS. Click for full size.

More than one-third of the individual donors to Jain’s and Brook’s campaigns are from outside Montgomery County (37 and 35%, respectively). They also have the largest absolute number of out-of-state donors: Jain has approximately 441; Brooks, 276.

Other candidates with a relatively large number of out-of-county donors include are Balcombe (26%), Conway (23%), Dang (20%), and Jawando (17%).

There is nothing inherently wrong with having out-of-county donors—this simply suggests that these candidates have a large network of supporters from their previous jobs and/or activism.

Candidates with the largest fraction of in-county donors are Ortman-Fouse (95%), Grimes (94%), Glass (92%), Siddique (91%), Riemer (89%), Wilhelm (89%), and Meitiv (89%).

Candidates not participating in public financing can also receive money from businesses, unions, organizations, PACs, and other campaign committees. The two charts below show the total amount raised (including additional public matching funds requested but not yet deposited) for each candidate.

Total funds raised this campaign cycle by leading campaigns for County Council At-Large, segregated by funding source. Data from MCRIS. Click for full size.
Fraction of total funds raised this campaign cycle by each campaign, segregated by funding source. Data from MCRIS. Click for full size.

As noted earlier, the 4-to-1 public match appears to provide enough money to even the playing field between “people-powered” campaigns participating in the public system and candidates using traditional financing.

Closing Thoughts

While I applaud Seventh State for keeping close track of how much money is being raised by all the different campaigns, it’s equally important to examine the number of donors to each campaign, especially since this is Montgomery County’s first election with public financing.

With 33 candidates vying for four seats, this is going to be a very close race. I would not be surprised if the fourth-place candidate won by as little as a few dozen votes.

Recall that earlier this year, an election for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates ended up in a tie. Each candidate had exactly 11,607 votes, and the Republican candidate, David Yancey, was declared the winner by a coin toss.

If you care about the future of Montgomery County, please vote in the primary election on June 26. You could very well be the deciding vote!

What can you do to get involved?

  1. Vote in the 2018 primary election on Tuesday, June 26.
  2. A helpful, unbiased guide to the election is available at www.vote411.org.
  3. You can also visit the official State Board of Elections website to learn more, check your registration status, and find your polling place.
  4. Tell your neighbors, friends, and family to vote in the primary!
  5. Shameless plug: read the candidates’ responses to the “East County Questionnaire“.

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