Donation-nation: City Council candidates raise money, and Kevin Faulconer raises most in early going
Campaign finance figures were released today for the first half of 2009 for the 2010 City Council races. Candidates could only begin fund raising on June 11, by city law. Today is the deadline for filing, so I expect some candidates’ filings will pop up as the day proceeds. I’ll update this post when they do.
A couple of highlights from perusing the filings:
• SDG&E remains active in donations, even at this early stage. The City Council recently voted to support the company’s decision to cut off power to the back country during periods of high fire risk. Writing in the Union-Tribune, Craig Gustafson looked at the substantial contributions made by SDG&E to City Council Members in the 2008 election cycle. The current filings show employees of SDG&E gave City Councilmember Kevin Faulconer $500, and District 8 candidate David Alvarez received $100 from a worker for SDG&E’s parent, Sempra Energy. Faulconer voted with the company early this week.
• Faulconer is sure making good use of his incumbent advantage, with a $71,000 haul in just three weeks of fund-raising.
• Howard Wayne is thus far the only candidate to put in for his own campaign. I track the self-funding figures, because candidates will sometimes crow about big fund-raising numbers, and then we later realize that they contributed a sizable percentage themselves.
| Office | Candidate | Money raised between Jan. 1 and June 30 | Amount put in by candidate (contributions and loans) | Percent of funding from candidate | Cash on hand as of June 30 |
| City Council District 2 | |||||
| Kevin Faulconer | $71,876 | $0 | 0% | $65,673 | |
| Patrick Finucane | NOT YET FILED | ||||
| City Council District 4 | |||||
| Tony Young | NOT YET FILED | ||||
| City Council District 6 | |||||
| Steve Hadley | NOT YET FILED | ||||
| Howard Wayne | $26,542 | $5,000 | 19% | $24,066 | |
| Lorie Zapf | NOT YET FILED | ||||
| City Council District 8 | |||||
| David Alvarez | $15, 919 | $0 | 0% | $14,982 | |
| John Brown | NOT YET FILED | ||||
| Felipe Hueso | NOT YET FILED | ||||
| Nick Inzunza | $0 | $0 | 0% | $0 | |
