Fundraising by Challengers to Primaried House Republicans

Earlier today, I posted a table showing how the primaried House Republican incumbents fared in fundraising between July 1, 2013 and December 31, 2013. They did well. So how did their opponents in the primary do? 

The table below lists the first eleven Republican House primary challengers in each district, the total dollars raised, the loans taken out for the campaign, the expenditures, and the cash-on-hand at the end of the reporting period. How did they do? Not too well, considering that there were only 8 weeks and 6 days until the primary election when the reporting period ended.

	July 2013-December 2013
District	Challenger	Raised	Loans	Expenditures	COH
1	Gary VanDeaver	$10,890	$2,500	$6,551	$9,389
4	Stuart Spitzer	$7,195	$22,000	$17,342	$22,346
6	Skip Ogle	$102,100	$10,000	$70,045	$50,956
8	Bobby Vickery
11	Tony Sevilla	$1,025	$0	$2,017	$0
12	Timothy Delasandro	$16,498	$600	$18,365	$1,163
18	Terry Holcomb	$4,300	$0	$2,287	$2,013
55	Molly S. White	$7,475	$0	$5,198	$1,100
59	Danny Pelton	$38,300	$0	$14,233	$7,918
	Howard Ray	$2,677	$0	$3,810	$500
60	Cullen Crisp	$17,595	$10,000	$17,376	$10,218
64	Read King	$20,265	$0	$11,328	$6,682
	AVERAGE	$20,756		$15,323	$10,208

One candidate, Bobby Vickery, did not file electronically; so I don’t have the data for his efforts. Among the remaining challengers, the average raised was $20,756; the average expenditure was $15,323; and the average cash-on-hand was $10,208. That doesn’t bode well for the group. However, some individual challengers did quite well. For example, Skip Ogle raised more than $100,000 and had more than $50,000 in cash-on-hand. He had already spend $70,045 by the end of 2013. In fact, his figures in all three categories raised the averages significantly. Stuart Spitzer, who I originally thought was situated well to challenge the incumbent, raised less than $10,000 and loaned himself $22,000 for his campaign. He also has an outstanding debt of $80,000 from his 2012 campaign, which brings his total debt to $102,000.

Several challengers have been endorsed by Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, including Bobby Vickery, Molly White, Danny Pelton, Cullen Crisp, and Read King. Whether their endorsement results in large campaign contributions and support in the primary remains to be seen. Perhaps these races are a test of Michael Quinn Sullivan’s clout in the Republican Party.

The next post will consider the remaining challengers to House Republicans.