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Fitzgerald fundraising: What to watch for on Wednesday

As Jake mentioned earlier, Ed FitsJereld held a teleconference today with ex-governor Ted Strickland to celebrate that fact that he finally got Strickland’s endorsement, weeks after it was obvious to everybody that Ed was the only Democrat in the race. (Huge get, Eddy. Congrats!)

One topic that came up was Wednesday’s deadline for reporting campaign finances. From Joe Vardon of the Dispatch,

As for Wednesday’s fundraising totals, Strickland said if FitzGerald was “in that ballpark, somewhere” of $500,000 — roughly what Kasich had at this point in 2009 — he will have shown he’s gathered support.

This is not the first time Ed’s campaign has put that number out there. He mentioned it in an interview with Jim Heath recently as well. He’s doing his best to manage expectations about what their numbers are going to be. They really want to use Kasich’s 2009 numbers as a baseline.

But is that a fair comparison?

Not really. Fitzgerald announced his candidacy and filed his initial treasurer’s report months earlier than Kasich did. So he has had much more time to raise funds.

Let’s do some basic math.

Kasich filed his initial treasurer designation on May 1st, 2009. (This is all available on the Secretary of State’s website, of course.) That report was 61 days from the end of the reporting period. At the end of June that year, he had raised a total of $516,309. So, in that 61 days, he raised an average of $8,464 per day.

It’s also important to note that the Ohio Republican Party contributed NONE of that $516,000.

Now let’s look at Fitzgerald. He filed his treasurer report on March 11th, which was 112 days away from the end of June. If he is really keeping up with Kasich’s 2009 numbers, he should be raising the same $8,464 per day.

112 times $8,464 is $947,968. If Fitzgerald is really seeing the same kind of support that Kasich saw early in 2009, he needs to show that he has raised over $900,000 on Wednesday, without any help added from the Ohio Democratic Party.

If he is in the $500,000 to $700,000 range, then he is really lagging behind. We shall see.

What about Kasich’s numbers on Wednesday? Well, we can compare him to Ted Strickland at this point in 2009, as well. Strickland was a good fundraiser.

Digging up an old 3BP post from years ago, we noted that Strickland traveled a lot, including many out of state trips, to raise money and reported a respectable $2.5 million raised. This was a very good haul, so if Kasich comes in around the same mark, he’s in good shape. (Even though Kasich hasn’t spent anywhere near the amount of time traveling to raise funds that Strickland did.) It will also be worth watching to see how much money comes from the ORP.

Other data to watch for in Wednesday’s reports will also be the number of donations and how much the candidates spent to raise those funds. Also of note will be how much money Ed gets from unions and the ODP. Of course, if you don’t want to pour through the reports yourself, rest assured, we will break it down for you here at 3BP. You’re welcome. 🙂



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Third Base Politics is an Ohio-centric conservative blog that has been featured at Hot Air, National Review, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and others.

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