Ah, campaign financial disclosure day--it's like Christmas for local-politics geeks. Today's filings from city candidates are rolling over the digital transom, courtesy of the Knox County Election Commission. We'll have a full wrap-up in next week's issue, but since we already reported Mark Padgett's impressive quarterly take, we thought it was worth also highlighting the report from Madline Rogero (who has been called by some people, including us, the putative front-runner). For the second quarter of the year, Rogero reports raising $63,911, giving her a campaign total so far of $160,411. She reports cash on hand of $86,812. In a press release, she says, "I am thrilled with our momentum and for the broad-based grassroots support from across Knoxville and all walks of life. We have now raised twice as much money as we did at this same time in 2003, and as much as we did in that entire campaign where we were outspent four to one."
She might not need to worry about being outspent four to one this year, but her cash on hand is almost exactly half of the $171,468 that Padgett is reporting. And given the deep pockets that Padgett is apparently getting access to (coff, Haslams, coff), he may well not have tapped out his available resources. Of course, having money and spending it well are two different things. The campaign will be interesting to watch from here on out.
In other mayoral contender news, black-horse black-belt unknown Bo Bennett reports that he raised $23.87 this quarter, giving him $62.88 in cash on hand.
UPDATE: We haven't gotten around to running through the names on the lists, but Rachel at KnoxViews notes two significant names among Rogero's donors: Bill Lyons, city of Knoxville policy and communications director, and Larry Martin, the city's deputy mayor. Both were right-hand-men to former Mayor Bill Haslam and worked closely with Rogero when she was Haslam's director of community development. Both gave her $500. Among the other familiar names that jump off the list at a glance are Eddie Mannis, the owner of Prestige Cleaners who was himself talked about as a mayoral candidate for a while; Bruce and Doug McCarty of McCarty Holsapple McCarty architects; and AC Entertainment founder Ashley Capps.
Comments » 0
Be the first to post a comment!
Share your thoughts
Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.