Rockville Candidate Finance Reports Show Hoffmann, Pierzchala With Most Cash On Hand
Oct 30, 2009 15:06 - 6 Comments
>The City of Rockville has now posted all candidates’ October 29 finance reports. They show a different story than our last story on this, which was based on the informal reports that candidates sent us on Monday and Tuesday.
In terms of cash on hand, the campaign of Susan Hoffmann has the most in the mayoral race, with $5,717.48 on hand. Among city council candidates, Mark Pierzchala leads cash on hand with $2,329.17.
The way the campaigns filled out the City’s finance forms varied, as did what they sent us earlier this week. In fact, it appeared that some of the forms did not total up correctly, and I started to try to make sense of it. While most campaigns filled the forms out the same way, some appeared to interpret the instructions differently. I finally gave up and decided to provide an overview of the summary sheets and direct links to the forms so you could make your own determination!
So, in the spreadsheet that follows, I just used the numbers written by the campaigns. If you see a discrepancy you can check out the original documents. (The direct links to the pdf reports are at the end of this article.)
(Here is a link to our last complete report on finances, so you can compare the spreadsheets.)
And here are the original reports:
Mayor
Council
- John Britton
- Piotr “Peter” Gajewski
- Carl Henn
- Trapper Martin
- Tom Moore
- Bridget Newton
- Virginia Onley
- Waleed Ovase
- Mark Pierzchala
- Max van Balgooy
Brad,While I don’t agree with candidate Max van Balgooy that the forms are harder to fill out than a Federal tax return, I think your analysis shows that it is very difficult for the novice reader to understand what is being reported. I don’t think the story is different from what you reported earlier. “Facts” can be mis-stated or mis-interpreted.By focusing on only one aspect of the campaign reports, you’ve missed the big picture - that to date Marcuccio has raised more money than Hoffmann, and that Marcuccio has raised the money mostly from regular Rockville voters, not special interests outside of Rockville.Do I think this is the last word? No, because if Hoffmann runs true to form, her last report (which will come out in December after the election) will show a large number of donations. I expect Hoffmann is planning to spend in excess of $25,000 to secure the Mayorship of Rockville. I partly anticipate this because her costs for a single mailing are about $7000, which says to me that she is mailing to every household with a voter in it (possibly to every address in Rockville), regardless of whether they have ever voted in a Rockville election or even have a voter listed as resident. That’s a very expensive strategy and takes big $$ to pull off.The Twinbrook Citizens Association made sure to get the Council candidates on the record that they would release their campaign reports in time for the Gazette to do a final article before the election. Hoffmann was the only candidate who did NOT release her report to the Gazette.Brad, I hope you will commit to publishing ALL the campaign results in December with an analysis that shows the true picture.
“i expect Hoffmann is planning to spend in excess of $25,000 to secure the Mayorship of Rockville.”If your prediction is true, Mayor Hoffmann will have beaten your candidate in money raised. This you say is a bad thing, yet your are posting to call attention to your candidate’s total as the highest so far.It’s hypocritical to boast that your candidate has raised more money but then criticize Mayor Hoffmann (based on your prediction) for raising money. And non-sensical, too!Special interests outside Rockville vs. “regular voters?” It’s very easy to review the filings. Mayor Hoffmann reported 39 contributions in this period. Seventeen were from Rockville. Four were from Bethesda, two from Gaithersburg, one from Chevy Chase, a few from Kensington, maybe one from Silver Spring. I have not reviewed her report from last time but have no worries about it.This is in no-way alarming. I have no fear that someone in Bethesda is going to suddenly have a bigger voice in Rockville city government than me. Or Kensington. And I have every confidence that you will turn out to be right-Mayor Hoffmann WILL secure her second term.
Please correct the 1st column of the posted spreadsheet to reflect $740, which is in Candidate Waleed Ovase’s October 29 campaign fund report under the “Prior Period” column. Thank you for providing the links to all the candidates’ campaign fund reports and allowing discrepancies to be clarified.
Brad, if and when you do print that analysis of the reports in December, please remember to re-post Christina Ginsburgs very interesting comment. I, for one, think we will all be surprised by what we find in the expenditures of the various candidates when we take a closer look.
A correction to Christina: the Gazette said Ms. Onley did not respond to request for her records. Ms. Hofffmann was NOT the only candidate, and clearly she released them to Rockville Central….If Brad should “reprint” Christina’s comment then he should also reprint mine, don’t you think?
A correction to Ms. Defino, you are wrong. Hoffmann did not release campaign finances to Rockville Central or any other media outlet. Her reason was her treasurer was “on travel”. If anyone takes the time to look over the report on the City website, they will see why she didn’t want voters to see it any sooner than they had to.Tallying Rockville voters who gave to her campaign, from start to last reporting period, I count about 27 out of 73. That equals something like 37%. Remember, not all Rockville addresses are within the city limits. Check a city map for confirmation.Compare that to Marcuccio. I had to work harder because she had more than twice the number of contributors and the data is hand-written. My calculations show that of the more than 160 contributors to her campaign, 94% are city of Rockville residents.I haven’t worked on the actual dollars from residents versus non-residents, but I will report it here when I do, if someone else doesn’t do it first.Where is the local support for the incumbent? If I were an incumbent with those stats, I’d be worried.