Posted on 09/17/2006 8:05:59 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Friedman leads field in individual donations; Perry holds cash lead
AUSTIN (AP) - Comedic candidate Kinky Friedman has far and away the most individual donations in the governor's race this year, collecting campaign cash from thousands across Texas and across the country.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry leads in total money, followed by independent Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn - both piling up millions of dollars and benefiting from some large contributions of $100,000 or more.
With Perry and Strayhorn holding that strong financial advantage entering the Nov. 7 election, Friedman will be working to capitalize on what appears to be a grassroots bloc supporting his rebel campaign. The election outcome should answer the question of whether Friedman has broad backing among voters or whether some people are merely enamored with his unorthodox candidacy.
"I think he's (Friedman) tapping into the anti-politics, anti-incumbent crowd in Texas and beyond," said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a non-profit that tracks money in politics.
The joke-cracking mystery writer had more than 17,000 individual donations from Texans from January through June, including online sales of his campaign memorabilia, according to a revew of campaign funding by The Associated Press. Perry had about 3,300 in-state donors, while Bell had about 1,400 and Strayhorn about 1,200. Friedman also leads the candidates' pack in out-of-state contributions.
Donors seem to like the novelty of Friedman's candidacy and appear to be giving because of that, often through his Internet fundraising and merchandising, McDonald said.
"Many have probably rarely, if ever, given to candidates," he said.
Friedman's online campaign store accounted for about one-third of his $1.5 million in contributions the first half of the year. The store sells inexpensive items, like bumper stickers for $3, caps for $20 and Kinky Friedman talking action figures for $29.95.
Friedman said in an AP interview this week that his supporters aren't buying his merchandise "the way Britney Spears' fans buy stuff."
"I think it's that we have given people hope. They think we can do it. The young people are inspired now and inspiring me," Friedman said.
Perry collected the most money during the six months, $4.7 million, followed by Strayhorn with $3.1 million. Democrat Chris Bell raised $1.3 million. The other candidates also have been raising money on the Internet.
Both Perry and Strayhorn had money socked away from previous years to use this election, and both collected this year from powerful sources.
"The governor is the biggest vacuum cleaner in the race. He's sucking up all the traditional, what we call, money from the lobby," which means corporate and trade group interests, said McDonald, whose group has been studying gubernatorial campaign reports separately from the AP review.
Strayhorn, a Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent, got large sums from trial lawyers, who typically support Democrats. She also received big contributions from principals of Ryan & Co., a tax and accounting firm that represents clients before her state agency.
Strayhorn received $250,000 each from trial lawyers Walter Umphrey of Beaumont and John Eddie Williams of Houston in June after it was confirmed she had collected enough voter signatures to make the ballot as an independent. She also got four other six-figure donations.
Perry had a $100,000 donation from poultry magnate "Bo" Pilgrim of Pittsburg. From other donors he got five $50,000 donations and received a total of $1.9 million from 76 contributions for $25,000 each.
Bell's biggest single donation was $100,000 from Aubrey Smith of Smith Energy in Houston.
All the gubernatorial candidates collected sizable amounts of cash from the state's major metropolitan areas. And all had donors from the glitzy ZIP codes of River Oaks in Houston and Highland Park in Dallas.
Perry led in fundraising in those exclusive enclaves, with $135,765, compared with Strayhorn's $77,758, Bell's $50,825 and Friedman's $21,817.
Friedman, who lives on a Hill Country ranch, collected the most money of all the candidates in nearby Kerrville, bagging a total of $11,521 there.
Bell pulled in his biggest contingency of contributions from his residence city of Houston, with a $698,522 total. Perry raised $1 million in Houston and Strayhorn had $758,484. Friedman collected $190,792 in Houston.
When it came to large individual donations, Perry and Strayhorn were the king and queen.
There are no limits on how much one can give a state political candidate in Texas, but some campaign finance advocates want to change that.
State Rep. Mark Strama, an Austin Democrat, said he will team with Democratic Rep. Mike Villarreal of San Antonio in the coming legislative session to push a bill that would limit one person's total campaign contributions to $100,000 per election cycle. The proposal died in the 2005 Legislature.
Strama said large gubernatorial contributions from both Democrats and Republicans, such as those in the current governor's race, and the $3 million San Antonio businessman James Leininger poured into GOP legislative primaries in the spring are reasons to renew the effort.
"A hundred thousand dollars is enough," Strama said. "The logic is that nobody needs to have more influence than that on the political process, and most people can't have that much influence on the political process."
Strama said it isn't fair to everyday voters who are just starting to feel they can have an effect on politics through the Internet.
Through the Web and traditional methods, out-of-state money also has trickled into the governor's race, but in relatively low amounts.
Friedman leads in total out-of-state donations with $269,324 reported so far this year, or about 17 percent of his total. His biggest concentrations of money from other states came from New York, California and New Mexico. He also has a few overseas donations.
Perry's out-of-state money amounted to 4 percent of his total for the six months. Strayhorn's was 2 percent, and Bell's was slightly below 3 percent.
The out-of-state giving to Friedman doesn't indicate any outside interests trying to influence Texas government, said McDonald of Texans for Public Justice.
Notable donations
A review by The Associated Press of the major gubernatorial candidates' campaign finance reports for the first six months of 2006 found the following notable contributions and trends:
DONATIONS IN TOTAL & DOLLAR FIGURES
Rick Perry, $4.7 million
Carole Keeton Strayhorn, $3.1 million
Kinky Friedman, $1.5 million
Chris Bell, $1.3 million
TOTAL NUMBER OF INDIVIDUAL DONATIONS FROM TEXANS
Kinky Friedman, 17,668
Rick Perry, 3,371
Chris Bell, 1,461
Carole Keeton Strayhorn, 1,279
TOTAL OUT-OF-STATE MONEY
Kinky Friedman, $269,324
Rick Perry, $212,093
Carole Keeton Strayhorn $59,770
Chris Bell, $35,585
INDIVIDUAL SIX-FIGURE & DONATIONS.
Carole Keeton Strayhorn: $250,000 from John Eddie Williams, Houston attorney; $250,000 from Walter Umphrey, Beaumont attorney; $250,000 from David Alameel, Dallas dentist; $150,000 from Amanda Ryan, spouse of a Ryan & Co. principal in Dallas; $100,000 from Joe Jamail, Houston attorney; $100,000 from Kenneth Banks of International Muffler Co. in Schulenburg.
Rick Perry: $100,000 from Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim, poultry magnate from Pittsburg.
Chris Bell: $100,000 from Aubrey Smith of Smith Energy in Houston.
Kinky Friedman: $125,000 and $100,000 in two separate donations from John McCall, hair products businessman from Spicewood.
These represent only individual donations made by the contributor and do not count smaller, separate donations that may have been made by these donors or by other donors whose combined gifts could surpass $100,000.
Sources: Texas Ethics Commission; Perry, Strayhorn, Bell and Friedman campaigns.
I will NEVER forget Rick Perry.I had to go to Austin on September 9th,2001 to play a charity-fundraiser at which he was the guest of honor.My friend(BK Kirkpatrick)persuaded me to stay an extra day(San Antonio).I was at her house when she awakened me and said that her daughter(Jeanne)had called fromm Savannah admonishing her to turn on her TV!I finally got home on September,16th!!It's like the JFK assassination,RFK,Martin Luther King Jr......You will NEVER forget where you were!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What has he done to offend you?I live(am moving to Vermont which is even more LIB)in The People's Republic of Mass.The ONLY person I can vote FOR is our governor Mitt Romney!!!!!!!!!!When I get to Vermont,it will be write ins(Mickey,Minney,Goofey,etc.,etc.,)..............
I think I knew Kinky was not politically correct, one of his hit songs was entitled Waitress Oh Waitress Come Sit On My Face. I won't give you the second line it was worse than the first. His buddy Willie Nelson was arrested for drugs yesterday and Kinky plans to give him a job. Think of all the dope parties he will have in the Texas Gov. Mansion.
He is all over the place in his positions but underneath it all he is a liberal. I know people who know him personally and they don't intend to vote for him even tho they consider him a friend.
Some of you have called Kinky "liberal" in this discussion but I can't agree.
There is no question that I am mainly interested in the Texas Governor's race, but you misread my posts if you think Kinky is the man of my choice for Governor.
I have said over and over that Perry is most likely my choice (despite my disappointment over his small business income tax). I DO think that Kinky get's a bad rap as a liberal (and read this interview if you disagree: http://www.ruminator.com/content/040501.html), and I would rather see protest votes go to Kinky rather than Strayhorn.
If you think I support Kinky, you must have missed where I have
1. criticized Kinky's blatant cronyism: "How come when Perry appoints a campaign supporter to a high political post it's cronyism, but when Kinky proposes to do the same thing, it's a hoot?"
2. criticized Kinky's environmental plan: "I'm wholly unimpressed with Kinky's energy scheme. Kinky's "20% by 2020" plan is a blatant rip off of Bell's "10% Renewable Energy by 2015" plan which Bell released four months ago. The same old song, different singer. ... Smitty Smith confirms he's not too sharp when he says Kinky's scheme is "the most aggressive plan we've seen -- we challenge the other candidates to meet it or beat it." If the Public Citizen puppet wasn't such a moron, he would know that Bell's tree-hugging plan is twice as "tree-huggy" and calls for providing incentives for tree-hugging builders (Kinky's doesn't), reducing CO2 emissions by 80% (Kinky doesn't), lowering mercury emissions from coal plants by 90% (Kinky doesn't), and restricting coal burning and promoting coal gasification alternative technology (even Strayhorn's plan also includes this as well as Bell's plan but Kinky's doesn't)."
3. criticized Kinky brainless comments which lost him any chance of winning black voters votes: "Kinky thinks that the word 'ghetto' means 'black neighborhood.' It is crap like this that is going to make me vote for Perry despite Perry's weak-as-dishwater stand on immigration, school prayer, Dan Patrick's anti-abortion trigger law, and Perry's godawful business income tax."
4. and if you really want to know where Kinky lost my vote (despite the fact that Kinky has the best positions on immigration, abortion, and school prayer), it was when Kinky ran this anti-hunting edortial in Texas Monthly:
Deer season may have ended, but that does not mean any of us are safe from an errant bullet fired by an errant bullethead. It only means that hunters have turned their cold sights from harmless Bambies and creatures that fly higher than their dreams to other prey. There is never a moment when a Texan cannot legally curl his finger 'round a happy trigger. Seasons have been decreed for white-tailed deer, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, alligator, dove, turkey, rabbit, javelina, quail, pheasant, squirrel, and yes, Virginia, that most fearsome of all predators in the wild, the lesser prairie chicken.
Today, however, I do not suffer hunters gladly. I realize, of course, that in a deeper sense all of us are hunting for something, and few of us ever find it. If we do, we often find ourselves killing the thing we love. As Oscar Wilde once so aptly described fox hunting: "The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable." And yet it goes on and on. Dressed in camouflage, the great white hunters sit in family restaurants, shiver in deer blinds, and swap stories sometimes proud, sometimes wistful for the one that got away. As blameless as bullfighters and butterfly collectors, these men for all seasons continue to wage a one-sided war against creation. They hunt only, they say, to cull the vast deer population. They hunt only to teach kids how to hunt. These are the good reasons they give, but they are not necessarily the real reasons. The truth is a much more difficult animal to track. As an honest old redneck once told me about deer: "I just like to put the brakes on 'em."...
Fortunately only about 4 percent of all Texans are licensed hunters. This means that 96 percent of us are relegated to the unhappy status of moving targets. Once the hunters shoot the donkey in the farmer's field, they'll shoot our asses next. A great writer named Anonymous once wrote: "The larger the prey, the more corrupt is the soul of the hunter." This may help explain why so many big-game hunters suffer from erectile dysfunction and run the risk of ending up like Ernest Hemingway, who eventually bagged the biggest game of all, himself. If you live in the Hill Country, however, you're probably just proud to have survived another hunting season without getting your head blown off. This does not necessarily guarantee, of course, that you won't be shot in the buttocks by some bow-hunting nerd like Ted Nugent.
(link: http://www.texashuntfish.com/flexiforums/thread.cfm?pid=8980&sid=17&fid=25)
I think you are misreading my posts.
I have said time and time again "I may yet vote for Perry, and I'm still leaning that way, but if you cannot vote for Perry because of some of his missteps, please consider Kinky as your only alternative" and "It is crap like {Kinky's blather} that is going to make me vote for Perry despite Perry's weak-as-dishwater stand on immigration, school prayer, Dan Patrick's anti-abortion trigger law, and Perry's godawful business income tax."
I'm disappointed in much of where Perry has strayed off task, but I hope any protest votes go Kinky's way and not Strayhorn's because I wast Texas polticians to see that a candidate can stand with us on immigration and abortion and win votes (where a protest vote for Strayhorn say you can win votes by drifing toward being a Republicrat).
As always, I remain leaning toward Perry, with a belief that Kinky is a better protest vote than Strayhorn for those who will not vote for Perry. I bet you I'm not alone in that belief.
Go Kinky.
Ditter:
Look at Hydroshock's "Go Kinky" post (one above). That's what a pro-Kinky post looks like. Me? I'm more "vote Perry, but his wandering off the agenda is inviting protest votes from his base, and if you are going to cast a protest vote, don't waste it on Strayhorn."
P.S. Today's SurveyUSA poll looks good for Perry:
Perry - 35%
Bell - 23%
Friedman - 23%
Strayhorn - 15%
Werner - 2%
There is simply no way to slice this pie so that Perry doesn't win (but a three-way race might have been scary).
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