Five of the seven candidates seeking southern
It’s a situation that’s unique among the state’s congressional races in 2008, and one that a top
While all but two candidates for the 2nd Congressional District seat have contributed $100,000 or more to their own campaigns, only one of the 14 Democratic and Republican candidates for the state’s other congressional seats – 3rd District Democratic candidate Don Wiviott – has done that, loaning his campaign $890,000.
The top self-financing candidate in the 2nd District race is Republican Greg Sowards, who has loaned his campaign $325,000. Not far behind is Republican Aubrey Dunn Jr., who has loaned a little more than $302,000 to his campaign. Democrat Harry Teague has loaned just under $210,000 to his campaign, while Republican Ed Tinsley has loaned $200,000 to his campaign and Republican Monty Newman has loaned his campaign $100,000.
The other two candidates in the 2nd District race are Republican C. Earl Greer and Democrat Bill McCamley. Greer has loaned his campaign almost $28,000, while McCamley has given $8,700 in in-kind contributions, such as gas for his automobile.
Brian Sanderoff, whose company Research and Polling Inc. is the top polling firm in the state, said the 2nd District “does not have a single city that dominates the political landscape,” which means local politicians who are trying to make the jump to Congress often don’t have widespread name recognition.
In addition, the district is spread out – it’s the eighth largest in the nation – and is served by two television media markets, but neither is based in the district (they’re located in
The bottom line is that few people are known throughout the 2nd District, and building significant name recognition is a challenge, Sanderoff said.
“These factors contribute to the proliferation of candidates with personal wealth who enter the race knowing that they will have to utilize their own seed money to get off the ground and gain recognition that will, hopefully, lead to their ability to raise funds from other parties,” he said.
Reasons for self-financing
Does seed money work? Two candidates who have contributed big money to their own campaigns – Tinsley and Teague – had also raised the most money from outside contributions as of March 31, with Tinsley raising almost $423,000 and Teague raising about $367,000. But McCamley was in third, having raised almost $342,000 from outside contributions.
Newman, who didn’t enter the race until January, says he raised more from people living in the 2nd District during the first quarter of 2008 than all other GOP candidates combined. He said the money he loaned his campaign “is a lot of money for me, but if other people are willing to donate money to my campaign for Congress, I should be prepared to put my own money into the campaign.”
Sowards and Dunn said they contributed to their own campaigns out of principle.
“I would rather have not run for Congress, but when I looked at the declared candidates, there was no one among them who would actually represent me as a true conservative with a vision for
Campaign spokesman Mario Burgos said Dunn and his wife provided a “nest egg” as an investment in
“He feels that giving back to a community that has given him so much is just the right thing to do,”
Teague’s campaign released a statement that said being able to contribute significantly to your own campaign “allows you to focus your time talking to voters rather than raising money from special interests.” Tinsley, who started the second quarter of the year with more cash on hand than any other candidate in the race, is confident that his is the only campaign with the resources, message and experience to “cut through the clutter” of the crowded, competitive GOP primary race and win, campaign spokesman Christopher Maloney said.
Hoping it’s about more than money
Because of the crowding in the GOP primary and the number of candidates who were self-financing, Greer said he chose a different tactic, running a grassroots campaign and focusing on personal contacts. The only publicly released polling of the Republican primary showed Greer competing, but not at the front of the pack. The poll, conducted for Dunn’s campaign at the end of March, had Dunn at 22 percent, Tinsley at 16 percent and Greer at 10 percent, with a margin of error of 4.9 percent. Newman was at 8 percent and Sowards was at 1 percent in the poll.
“It’s exactly where we were hoping it would be at this point,” Greer said. “Here’s an opportunity for
McCamley said he’s hopeful that elections are about more than money.
“Money is important. I’m not going to be naïve and deny it. That’s why I’ve spent so much time raising money,” he said. “But I’m hoping that the average New Mexican voter looks past the money and considers the issues and the two candidates on the Democratic side. If they do that, I’m confident that they’ll choose me.”
The only publicly released polling of the Democratic primary showed McCamley with a big lead. The poll, conducted for McCamley’s campaign in mid-March, had him ahead of Teague by 21 points, 43 percent to 22 percent, with a margin of error of 4.9 percent. Shortly after that poll was released, however, Teague began rapidly spending his money on TV ads, and he has continued running them for weeks. McCamley has not yet run TV ads.
McCamley said his finance report proves that his hard work and grassroots campaigning have paid off. He said he received 397 contributions during the first quarter of 2008, 88 percent of them from New Mexicans. The average size of his contributions was $204. Teague, by comparison, had fewer than half as many donors, and his average contribution was almost $900.
Greer says he’s also experiencing an outpouring of support and believes voters will make their decision based on “the message and the individual.” His candidacy depends on it: He’s the only Republican or Democratic candidate who, as of March 31, hadn’t raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“People are liking the personal contacts. They’re liking the meet-and-greets, the coffees we’re having. They’re liking getting to sit down and look me in the eye and talk to me,” Greer said. “They’re realizing that I really am what I’m portraying myself to be.”
But Sanderoff said the candidates who can’t or don’t invest a great deal of their own money in the race are at a disadvantage. He said he knows of other potential 2nd District candidates who stayed out of the race because they knew that.
“I’m not saying that you have to have money to win in all circumstances,” Sanderoff said. “I’m just saying in this circumstance, you’re at a disadvantage.”
As I’ve disclosed in the past, I’m friends with McCamley. Click here to read about that. A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that Tinsley had given his campaign $150,000.