The Community Impact posted an article today that called the fundraising efforts of all candidates "competitive" but only considered campaign reports for April 2019 without mention of the beginning campaign funds for the incumbents. The analysis in the article did not include finance reports from January 2019 thereby omitting more than half of the campaign contributions for incumbent council members.
The Community Impact article also failed to use a consistent standard for reporting on the campaign contributions in its commentary. The following analysis provides a consistent report on the incumbents of direct PAC contributions and contributions of $1,000 or more from a single donor.
According to campaign finance reports, Cedar Park incumbent council members started 2019 with significant campaign funds. The incumbents reported the following maintained funds as of the end of January 2019 (approx.): Jefts $20,000, Duffy $12,000, Thomas $31,000. The challengers faced a steep fundraising hill to climb in only a few months to be competitive in a city with the population (over 80,000) and geographical size of Cedar Park.
Noteworthy is that all three incumbents reported the majority of donations in dollar amounts from outside Cedar Park. Travis Outrider previously reported on the incumbents receiving the majority of their money from outside Cedar Park while the challengers received the majority of funding from contributors in the city. (Reference: https://travis-outrider.blogspot.com/2019/04/duffy-and-jefts-hold-big-money-lead.html)
In terms of individual contributions Duffy and Jefts drew roughly 60% in Cedar Park transactions and 40% outside the city. Thomas reported an unusually large amount of unidentified cash, and most of his contributions were from PACs. Thomas underperformed the other incumbents by significant amounts although he personally donated $650 each to Duffy and Jefts while neither Duffy nor Jefts donated to his campaign.
Duffy reports the following donors of $1000 or more and PACs:
- Husch-Blackwell of Austin $1500,
- Hillco PAC and associates of Austin $1000,
- Ellis of Austin $1000,
- Maria Martin of Cedar Park $1000,
- Freese and Nichols PAC of Ft. Worth $500,
- Halff PAC of Richardson $500,
- Homebuilders PAC of Austin $250,
- CPPFA PAC $1000.
- Maria Martin of Cedar Park $1500,
- Milestone Builders of Austin $2000,
- Pohl of Austin $1000,
- Hillco PAC of Austin $1000,
- Homebuilders PAC of Austin $250,
- CPPFA PAC $1000,
- Meade (Husch-Blackwell) of Austin $1500,
- Halff PAC of Richardson $250,
- Freese and Nichols PAC of Ft. Worth $250.
- $2,060 in unidentified cash
- Citizens for Sensible Growth PAC of Cedar Park $1000,
- Milestone Builders of Austin $2000,
- TREPAC of Austin $500,
- NBA Home PAC of Austin $500.
