Doug Turner (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Turner raised $400,771.90 from Oct. 1 to April 5 – with $198,745.92 of that coming as loans from Turner to his campaign, he reported today.
Turner spent $351,656.74, according to his report, and ended the period with $260,215.18 on hand. He also had $174,924.63 in in-kind contributions during the reporting period.
The Turner campaign provided NMPolitics.net with the cover sheet for Turner’s report, saying he’s filed the report with the Secretary of State’s Office even though it hasn’t yet appeared online.
The Turner campaign confirmed that the new loans were all from Turner, who now has $371,298.27 in unpaid campaign debt. Turner also paid back $71,000 in campaign debt during the reporting period.
Earlier today, Turner’s primary opponent Susana Martinez reported that she raised $428,064.67 from Oct. 1 to April 5. Opponent Janice Arnold-Jones reported that she had raised a little more than $110,000 in financial contributions and had another $54,193.79 in loans, for a total of more than $164,000 in fundraising.
Finance reports for the other GOP candidates, Allen Weh and Pete Domenici Jr., aren’t yet online.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Diane Denish announced earlier today that she had raised more than $1.1 million during the reporting period.
Update, 11:30 p.m.
Some interesting tidbits from Turner’s report, which is now online. There are lots of contributions – some of them sizeable – from people listing addresses in Loco Hills, N.M., outside Artesia. Also, there are tens of thousands of dollars in in-kind contributions from Turner’s public relations company, D.W. Turner.
Then there are the loans. All $198,745.92 in loans came from D.W. Turner, not from Turner himself. And, interestingly, some of the loan dates coincide with big payments to D.W. Turner. For example, D.W. Turner loaned the campaign $57,444.62 on March 31. Also on March 31, the campaign reported a “consulting” expense of $57,444.62 paid to D.W. Turner.
So the company loaned the campaign money and got paid the same amount of money by the campaign on the same day. It also happened on Feb. 28 – this time for $30,655.57, on Jan. 31 for $24,956.29, on Jan. 14 for $16,024.83, on Dec. 31 for $43,958.44, and on Nov. 30 for $11,394.12.
I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll ask.
Update, April 13, 8:30 a.m.
Turner’s campaign director, Carri Phillis, said the identical loans and expenditures recorded on the same days reflect the fact that D.W. Turner does media buys for all its clients, including the Turner campaign. When it does that, it spends its own money, which becomes a loan to the Turner campaign. The campaign then pays D.W. Turner back for the media buy.