Both the Brooks and Slaughter campaigns filed spending reports covering April, May and a few days in June, and Louise Slaughter out-raised Maggie Brooks by about $56K. Slaughter has close to $700K in the bank, with Brooks reporting about $370K.
Looking at the details, we see that Slaughter received about 54% of her donations from Political Action Committees (PACs) and 46% from individual donors. Small donors (giving under $200) were 37% of the total individual haul. For the whole cycle, Slaughter has received 36% of her donations from individuals, and the rest from PACs.
Brooks received all her donations from individual donors this reporting period, and almost all of that (96%) from donors giving more than $200. This means that Brooks will have more donors reaching their $5,000 limit than Slaughter, and will need to find new sources of funds as we approach the general election. Brooks has gotten 89% of her donations from individuals over the whole cycle.
This is a real “meh” fundraising report for Brooks, who was a fundraising dynamo during her County Executive runs. She’s tapped out a lot of major big-name donors (the Wegmans figure prominently in this report) but unless she has a bunch more of those in her pocket, she’ll need to work the phones harder to raise enough money to be competitive in this race.
Your third paragraph needs some editing. Not sure what you were trying to say there.
In many ways, this puts Slaughter in the driver’s seat. Brooks will have to actually take a stand on issues in order to generate support and money, if she is to compete. It seems the whole “run on my county executive experience” strategy is failing.
Of course, I still think this is a dry run for her. The real goal is to run and win the open seat when Slaughter retires (especially in an off year election). Unless Morelle and others start positioning themselves now, that will be a real battle.
The unknown is whether some corporate supporter will take advantage of Citizens United and drop some serious advertising into this race.
I don’t see a Democrat who can beat Brooks in the wings.