10th District Fundraising Roundup

All the reports are in. As expected, Barbara Comstock crushes it, ending the reporting period with more than nine times the cash-on-hand of her nearest rival. But that’s not the interesting part.

The big story out of this week’s release of fundraising figures for the 10th District race is clearly that Barbara Comstock is financially ready to go toe-to-toe with Nancy Pelosi’s personal project, Democrat nominee John Foust. Jeanine has the details on that here.

More interesting is what’s underneath some of the other candidates’ numbers.

Marshall’s respectable (but less than stellar) showing isn’t surprising, as his entire strategy is based on old fashioned grassroots politicking. His mail pieces so far have been well done and effective, but the real nuts and bolts of his campaign is an unparalleled ground game of dedicated socially conservative activists. His fundraising totals will not be indicative of how he fares on the 26th.

Howie posts a respectable bottom line, but unfortunately, his actual fundraising was terrible. His amount raised is $140,000, but unfortunately $120,000 of that came from a loan from himself. Not exactly a harbinger of a last-minute groundswell of public support.

Surprisingly, the elusive Rob Wasinger actually raised a pretty respectable sum of almost $83,000. He was one of only two candidates whose books were completely in order by the filing deadline, with all bills paid and zero debt.

Marc Savitt, as an outspoken fan of The Bull Elephant, is clearly the smartest and most well-informed candidate in the race. 😉 Unfortunately, his wisdom and erudition does not translate into a fantastic ability to raise money.

Perhaps the most interesting piece of news in the campaign finance reports belongs to Stephen Hollingshead. Although he raised a respectable amount on his own, in addition to a $63,000 personal loan, Hollingshead lists among his other debts “disputed” arrears in the amount of $16,811 to Concentric Direct LLC, a consulting firm. Concentric is run by a friend of mine named John Pudner. Pudner last month made a bit of a splash by publicly dishing on Hollingshead’s apparent refusal to return Concentric’s email lists to Pudner when Pudner left the campaign over unpaid fees.was released for cause from the campaign [UPDATED on the basis of a comment below from Hollingshead campaign manager Luke Mahoney; we will publish any additional details either party provides us] Pudner took the extraordinary action of emailing THAT SAME LIST OF 10th DISTRICT VOTERS to tell them, in essence, what a dirtbag he thinks Stephen Hollingshead is.

I am sorry you and many of my contacts are still receiving emails from Stephen Hollingshead. Unfortunately, he got my contacts from my office, and has ignored my request to stop sending emails to you and all my friends in the 10th district.

Stephen Hollingshead obviously had almost no contacts in Virginia’s 10th district when he moved to the district recently to run for office, so I am sorry he got ahold of mine.
I do find it curious that he titled his latest message “A Conservative Who Can Win…,” since he lost the only time he ran, which was in Wisconsin, while the two main contenders (Barbara Comstock and Bob Marshall) for this seat have won many races IN VIRGINIA.

This message is not authorized or paid for by any candidate, I just wanted to pass along that I do not condone Hollingshead continuing to use my contact list to email you and others.

– John

Interestingly, Concentric Direct and John Pudner also count among their clients Dave Brat, currently running to unseat Eric Cantor in the 7th District.  Advice to Brat: make sure Pudner gets paid!

The detailed totals for each GOP candidate in the 10th District are below:

Stay tuned for additional analysis of this race as we head into the home stretch ahead of the April 26 canvass.