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:
| CANDIDATE | RAISED | CASH ON-HAND | DEBT |
| Barbara Comstock | $761,354 | $520,030 | $93,631 (accounts payable) |
| Howie Lind | $140,838 | $38,313 | $120,000 (personal loan) |
| Stephen Hollingshead | $122,178 | $57,507 | $96,235 ($63,000 personal loan, accounts payable, including “disputed debt”) |
| Rob “The Elusive” Wasinger | $82,742 | $9,302 | $0 |
| Bob Marshall | $55,240 | $40,862 | $10,475 (unreimbursed expenses) |
| Marc “Savvy Reader” Savitt | $13,764 | $4,768 | $0 |
Stay tuned for additional analysis of this race as we head into the home stretch ahead of the April 26 canvass.
13 comments
Thank you for this article, Steve. You get inside the numbers.
Here’s the bottom line; This is going to be at least $4-6 million campaign. The Democrat, Fairfax Supervisor John Foust, has already raised about $760,000 himself and will not need to spend a penny of it fighting off primary opponents because there aren’t any. More, the Democrats clearly see an opportunity here and if they think we’ve got a weak opponent will spend all they can to take this seat. Unless you’ve been living in a cave you also know that Terry McAuliffe’s new PAC, “Common Good VA”, has been raising money right and left and will spend a good deal of it here.
So whoever wins on April 26 will need to raise a ton of cash just to make this competitive. A ground game is good and necessary (and Barbara beats all of the rest hands down here too, see my other comment), but a ground game alone can not overcome the inevitable barrage of negative ads and mailers that the Democrats will throw at us.
One of the purposes of a primary is to test how well the candidates can campaign,and whether we like it or not and money is a huge factor. No one in this list can loan themselves $4-6 million, so it will have to be raised. If you can’t raise money now you won’t be able to do it after April 26.
Finally someone with a sense of reality! Spot on.
Hah, sorry I just saw this so I will give ONE lengthy but general response and then let others have the last word and hack away at me. I will just say that when a candidate signs an agreement I have always assumed he or she will honor what they have signed. In turn, I spend money in accordance to help the candidate win under the assumption it is covered by the next scheduled payment. For example, many said Jeff Frederick couldn’t win the race for Chair several years ago because all his campaign money he raised was being paid to my company- not realizing almost all the money being paid covered payments my company had already made to cover the entire field staff week in and week out. I would hope that all Republicans could at least agree that meeting a payroll is never easy whether it’s a traditional small business or hiring a bunch of field staff for several months for a campaign. If Obama had ever had to meet payroll we might not be fighting quite as many crazy ideas. Oh yeah, the critics said Jeff Frederick would only get 20% of the vote and he won despite “giving all of his money to my company.”.
Occasionally a candidate does not honor his written word and I am left having paid out thousands more for things the campaign needed in a timely manner than I ever receive from the campaign. I am happy to say these are the rare exceptions and I feel blessed to have been able to work with dozens of successful candidates and even unsuccessful candidates who kept their word. I actually looked through the list of the Republican legislators in Alabama (the GOP finally took over in 2010) and realized I had written mail, call center scriptss and/or coordinated door to door for over half of all GOP legislators When I was back in Virginia 13 of my 17 candidates had won as Republicans took over in the 1990s.The campaign discussed here was just one of those rare occasions where I was much poorer for having agreed to work for a candidate than if I had never met him.
Win or lose, most candidates have been great. However, if I feel a candidate does not honor an agreement we both signed I have to draw the line. Sometimes in a campaign it makes perfect sense to change focus – shoot some candidates can be like college kids switching majors and it works fine. If a candidate makes a change I simply believe they should honor the agreement they signed through the day of that decision rather than trying to lawyer out of their commitment – and when I believe the latter has happened i am very direct in what I believe is right even though critics will fire away. But the campaign managers basic statement below is correct – I did not leave the campaign because I was not getting paid. I’ve had candidates who did not raise any money and I have scaled back agreements, done the last couple of months pro bono, etc. In fact, I believe if you dug back far enough you would find that I charged Bob Marshall a total of something like $100 for his first re-election campaign just because he faced a serious threat from the son of a Commonwealth Attorney and he was already the best pro-life voice we had in the legislature.
I’ll just leave it at that and let anyone who wants have the last word and take any shots they want.
I hear he’s out from the Brat campaign also.
Brat hired Pudner? Kiss of death to a campaign.
I would advise caution in describing Marshall’s ground game as unparalleled. During Marshall’s last run in a federal-level primary election (in 2012), he beat Allen 41%-40% in Manassas Park but lost to Allen 53%-34% in Manassas and 65%-14% within the overall 10th CD. Barely winning your home turf by a plurality and getting squashed everywhere else nearby is not indicative of an unparalleled ground game.
Good point, Jax. Not to mention that at the LCRC Jamboree earlier this month, he only showed up with himself, his wife, and I think maybe one or two other people. Other than Comstock, none showed up with more than a handful of people. Comstock, on the other hand, showed up with 25-30! Some of hers were paid, but so were some of the folks from the other campaigns too. Boots on the ground are boots on the ground no matter how you put them there. She can not only raise money but can conduct an effective grassroots campaign as well.
Wow. Pudner really slammed Hollingshead. I wonder what’s going on there.
No kidding…I bet there’s some interesting back story.
Concentric Direct (John Pudner’s company) did not leave the campaign for lack of payment. They were terminated for cause, which led to the disputed amount.
Luke Mahoney
Hollingshead for Congress
Campaign Manager
can you be more specific about the cause?
Thank you for the correction, Luke. I’ve updated the post to reflect your feedback.
John Pudner is a total sleaze.