| This is great news and really speaks to how important it was to win back TX-23 last year in the special rather than waiting around til 2008.
Rep. Ciro Rodriguez has nearly $600,000 available for his re-election campaign, almost twice as much as his nearest potential 2008 challenger, Federal Election Commission records show.
San Antonio lawyer Francisco "Quico" Canseco, a Republican, has $303,553 in cash-on-hand. He raised $78,000 during the three-month period ending Sept. 30 and loaned his campaign $140,000.
The campaign spent $350,000 on TV and radio advertising.
Jim McGrody, a businessman seeking the Republican nomination, raised $11,000 and ended the period with $5,500 in cash-on-hand.
One other interesting note from the SAEN story...
Canseco's decision to spend his personal funds have earned him support from Republicans in Washington, said David Wasserman, an analyst with the non-partisan Cook Political Report.
I wish the Republicans (as well as Democrats) would move past the idea that spending your own personal funds is the only way to be taken seriously by insiders in Washington. Self-funders track record isn't all that great. Here's what the Wall Street Journal pointed out about self-funding earlier this year.
Indeed, the majority of self-funded campaigns fail. The Center for Responsive Politics says only one of the 30 congressional candidates who spent at least $500,000 of their own money in 2004 got elected. (That one was Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican.)
Acording to Jennuifer Steen, a professor at Boston College who wrote a book on self-financed candidates for Congress, such candidates won only about 30 percent of their elections between 1990 and 2000.
Granted, Steen says that spending millions of your own money on a race can blunt the opposition. But for the most part, money doesn't guarantee victory. What matters more is the experience of a candidate and his or her appeal to voters. While money helps, it can't rescue a bad candidate.
Ciro may not have always had the best track record in raising money but he's been steadily building up his campaign coffers and should be well placed in 2008 as an incumbent. |
