Statewide Candidates Meet Filing Deadline for Public Funds
by Christine Stuart | Jul 16, 2010 5:33pm
(5) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Election 2010
Today’s 5 p.m. deadline to apply for public campaign funds has come and gone for candidates waging primary battles for statewide offices.
Officials for the State Elections Enforcement Commission confirmed that Secretary of the State candidate Gerry Garcia filed his application Friday.
Garcia, a former New Haven alderman, was one of a few candidates seeking donations right up until Friday’s deadline. Late Thursday afternoon, the Garcia campaign sent an email blast to its supporters saying the campaign was $3,000 away from the $75,000 threshold it needs to leverage $375,000 in public funds.
The State Elections Enforcement Commission will meet Wednesday, July 21 to approve or deny applications.
Garcia’s opponent, Majority Leader Denise Merrill, applied for the grant on July 1 and already has received the $375,000 in state funds.
Also filing on the last day were lieutenant governor candidate Mary Glassman and state comptroller candidate Kevin Lembo. Glassman’s opponent, Nancy Wyman, already qualified for the $375,000 in public funds, along with Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura, who is running against Lembo in the Democratic primary.
George Jepsen, the lone Democratic candidate for attorney general, also filed his application even though he doesn’t have a primary. Jepsen’s application was approved last week by the commission. Jepsen is the only candidate for attorney general participating in the program.
Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton’s joint application to the commission was approved more than a week ago. The approval of the application filed with Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele’s campaign for governor is being challenged in court by Republican frontrunner Tom Foley.
The state Supreme Court will hear argument about a lower court decision to allow Fedele and Boughton to keep the supplemental grant triggered by Foley’s spending in the campaign.
It’s unclear how this week’s U.S. Second Circuit Court decision banning these trigger provisions — which it said impedes the free speech of the wealthier candidates — will play out when briefs on that decision are filed in the state Supreme Court.
The state Supreme Court has asked lawyers involved in the Foley v. SEEC lawsuit to file briefs on the U.S. Second Circuit Court decision. Foley is challenging a lower court’s decision to deny his injunction and stop the transfer of supplemental funds to one of his opponents.
In addition to Fedele, Democrat Dan Malloy also qualified for the program and has already received the $2.5 million for use in his gubernatorial campaign.
(5) Comments
posted by: Tessa Marquis | July 16, 2010 5:49pm
Did everyone running on Clean Elections Program make the threshold? Or are there Primary Election stragglers who will now opt out of the program and raise funds The Old Fashioned Way?
posted by: William Jenkins | July 17, 2010 12:47am
As far as the multi-town State Rep. primaries, there is only one State Rep. candidate who had said he was participating and didn’t meet his threshold, Republican Brad Waslenko in the 104th. His opponent doesn’t appear to be participating, she had until today to either declare she was or wasn’t. It looks like she didn’t raise enough money to participate.
It appears that only one State Senate candidate who is in a Democratic primary who filed an intent to abide by the expenditure limit didn’t raise her $15,000.00, Alice Hutchinson in the 24th. Her opponent doesn’t have appeared to have even filed his July 12th financial disclosure report or his intent to abide or intent no to abide form.
Unfortunately the Secretary of the State’s office doesn’t publish a list of the single town (municipal) primaries even though the endorsement forms are now required to be filed with them. There are quite a few of those primaries going on around the state and I’m sorry I didn’t have the time to track all those down.
Two interesting multi-town State Rep. primaries are:
1. The Republican primary in the 45th. The party endorsed candidate was pretty much just a place holder and the challenger didn’t even attend the convention to try and get his 15% so he petitioned his way on to the ballot and today, he filed his intent to abide and his grant application including his updated financial disclosure statement which looks like he will qualify for the grant.
2. The Democratic primary (Cam Staples open seat), the party endorsed candidate qualified for the grant, one challenger is on the ballot but not raising any money and another challenger (Debra Hauser) is non participating and put in $15,000.00 or her own money and raised the bulk of the rest with $250.00 contributions. She’s raised a total of $22,420.00 as of June 30th. She is literally doing it the “Old Fashioned Way” but not truly self funding since 1/3 of her total raised is from other individuals. I say good for her and I hope she wins.
posted by: abg | July 18, 2010 11:40am
In the 96th state assembly district that William Jenkins references, Hauser is indeed raising money “the old-fashioned way” if the old-fashioned way is self-financing with a few large-dollar contributions on the side, many of them from individuals residing outside of the 96th district. $2120 of her funds were raised from Woodbridge, more than she has raised from either Hamden or New Haven, the two towns in the district. According to the New Haven Independent, between March 30 and April 30, Hauser received one campaign contribution - $100 from a Woodbridge resident. Meanwhile her home is reportedly in foreclosure. Jenkins says “good for her,” but I don’t see any of this information as particularly favorable to her candidacy.
posted by: William Jenkins | July 19, 2010 1:50am
$1875.00 in Hamden and $1600.00 in New Haven. She has lots of financial supporters who live in Woodbridge, no one really cares. You didn’t lie abg but you didn’t give all the facts either. That’s not very responsible. Now that people have all the facts, I don’t see any of this information as particularly unfavorable to her candidacy. I did make an error in my first statement though, I said the bulk of her $7,240.00 from individuals was in the form of $250.00 (the maximum) contributions. She actually only received eleven $250.00 contributions and also received 38 $50.00 contributions.
Voters rarely care where a candidate’s money came from. It may be something for her opponent and her opponents supporters to complain about but it basically doesn’t matter to almost all of the undecided primary voters. If anything, more voters appreciate a candidate using their own money on their campaign instead of constantly hitting them up for contributions or worse yet using taxpayer’s money, especially this year.
If you don’t believe me then call just about any legislator and ask them if they’ve received any complaints from their constituents about using taxpayer funds to mail their regular legislative mail.
