Montford, Sage Take Differing Approaches in Final Days of 299th Runoff

by: Karl-Thomas Musselman

Wed Apr 07, 2010 at 04:13 PM CDT

With one week until the April 13th Runoff being complete, the only Democratic race in Travis County is simultaneously gearing up and winding down. Barring any late surprises, the contest between Mindy Montford and Karen Sage has been a positive affair and at this point the final strategies have been set.

On Monday the two campaigns released their 8-day pre-election campaign finance reports. As noted below, Montford outraised Sage for the Feb 22nd - Apr 3rd reporting period and ended the period with seven times as much cash on hand. Sage had higher expenditures than Montford. Sage is still carrying $20,000 in personal loans, which technically gives her negative cash on hand numbers but it's traditional for campaigns to return or forgive that personal debt after the campaign so I've not counted that below. 

As to what the campaigns are spending money on? Besides consultants and money for field staff from both campaigns, the submitted reports won't cover the latest expenditures. We can see what each campaign is spending money on from what they have produced to voters, though. For Karen Sage, those limited dollars are going into a TV ad (with about $12,000 already being posted for mail after the runoff in the 8-day report). With no expenditure listed for TV in the report, and no daily finance reports posted to note last minute large contributions, it would appear that the following ad can't be running very widely (not that I would spend any money on TV in a low turnout runoff but hey, to each their own).

Sage's ad focuses on mental health, something that has been talked a lot about from all candidates in this race, and invokes District Attorney Rosemary Lehmburg (who of course, defeated Montford in a 2008 runoff for District Attorney). As for Montford, direct mail from the Montford campaign has already hit voters' mailboxes at least once this week.  

Beyond the traditional hallmarks of mail, tv, and field, both campaigns have a presence in the social networking space, though Montford's networks tend to be larger than Sage's due in part from running before and simply having lived in Austin longer.

On their main Facebook Campaign pages, Montford has 628 supporters to Sage's 399. Beyond that, Montford has a personal page with a network of over 1500 friends with Sage's personal profile listing just shy of 360 friends. Montford also has 2 additional groups, one with 370 supporters and a GLBT specific group for her campaign with 35 additional folks. While there's always some overlap in groups, all told Montford's social network presence is about four times as large as Sage's. Only Montford is on Twitter where she has 73 followers. For fairness sake, Montford has hired the social networking gurus at GNI Strategies.

With the Austin American-Statesman backing Montford, and the Austin Chronicle backing Sage, it's not as if the runoff is expected to be a blowout for either side. Early vote to date includes 1491 in person voters and 638 mail voters for a total of 2129. I expect total turnout to be around the 13,000 mark with as low as 10,000 and as high as 15,000.

I've taken a look at a little analysis of the first early votes and can say this much. Precincts are turning out at about the same rates around the county as they did in March. Someone's Vote By Mail campaign was successful as there is a higher than expected share of "new" vote by mail voters. There are very few "new" voters that didn't already vote in the March runoff. The electorate is old and the electorate is very white. As to what that means, I have my own opinions but since I'm biased I'll leave that for friends and those in the comments to debate. 

Update: What should appear in my inbox minutes ago? A fundraising appeal from the Montford campaign asking for help to go up on TV to respond to Sage's TV spot. My opinion doesn't change, I think it's equally silly to put resources on the air to try to lure new voters into the runoff- the evidence just isn't there that that will happen. Maybe the fairest way to put my critique is that putting money on TV at the *expense* of mail or field is a bad idea. If you are going on air in addition to your existing outreach and it's a luxury item you can afford, then sure, go ahead. Maybe Montford's cash edge is making her feel confident enough to raise some new dollars to respond that wouldn't have otherwise been there to direct to something else. But will an ad be cut and on air before the end of the week and 1/3 to 1/2 of the votes are cast? We'll see. 

Update 2: I forgot that candidate who loan themselves money do not have to file it on the late "24 hour" reports required for late donations. Loophole of sorts, and probably how Sage is funding her TV buy- self funding.