A.G. GancarskiOctober brought big scores to some Northeast Florida campaigns and committees. Here’s the seat-by-seat rundown.
State Senate
Senate District 4’s Republican incumbent Aaron Bean brought home the bucks.
October saw $36,000 come into Bean’s coffers: $24,000 to his campaign account, and another $12,000 to his committee, “Florida Conservative Alliance.”
All told, Bean has roughly $78,000 of hard money, and $102,000 in committee coffers: a total of $180,000 in deployable resources.
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SD 5 incumbent Audrey Gibson — the next leader of the Senate Democrats — brought in $10,000 in October, which was her third straight month in five figures. More than half of that money came in from Big Pharma.
Gibson has roughly $88,000 cash on hand
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Fleming Island Sen. Rob Bradley is not up for re-election, but his fundraising was notable also.
“Working for Florida’s Families,” Bradley’s political committee, reached a milestone with a $40,000 October, clearing $500,000 cash on hand.
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House candidates and committees
HD 11 Republican incumbent Rep. Cord Byrd raised $2,000 in October, spent $2,500, and has $15,392 on hand.
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Southside Jacksonville’s HD 12 is seeing a competitive race, with Republican incumbent Clay Yarborough winning the money race handily against Democrat Tim Yost.
Yarborough brought in $21,750 in October, giving him roughly $73,000 on hand. Yost finished October with roughly $2,300 on hand, with $1,208 brought in from individual contributors.
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HD 13 incumbent Democrat Tracie Davis brought in $7,500 of new money in October, giving her $28,190 raised and on hand. Davis thus far faces no opposition in her safe Democratic seat.
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Incumbent HD 14 Democrat Kim Daniels raised nothing and spent $1,500 on a “media consultant” based in South Florida. She has almost $600 cash on hand, but faces no ballot opposition.
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HD 15 Republican Wyman Duggan had a strong month: $20,500 in October, bringing him to $84,600 raised, with nearly $77,000 on hand. Democrat Tracye Polson kept pace.
She brought in $14,090 off of 64 contributions in October, bringing her total raised to $65,189, with over $64,000 of that on hand. Her committee has another $12,000 banked, giving her $76,000 raised.
Notable: the majority of Polson’s contributions are from outside HD 15, with many of them in the Washington D.C. area. And much of what she has amassed is self-financed.
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In HD 16, incumbent Republican Jason Fischer continues to rake in the bucks.
Fischer cleared over $17,000 in October, between his campaign account and that of his political committee, “Conservative Solutions for Jacksonville.”
Fischer has almost $62,000 cash on hand, with over $28,000 in the committee coffers, giving him roughly $90,000 to deploy.
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Down in St. Johns County’s HD 17, Cyndi Stevenson added just over $9,000 to her coffers, giving her $51,000 on hand, for a campaign in which she will run unopposed.
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HD 18’s incumbent Republican, Travis Cummings, had another strong month. Cummings brought in $10,000, and ended October with over $58,000 on hand; he has no ballot competition yet.
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October was a good month also for incumbent House District 19 Rep. Bobby Payne.
His primary opponent withdrew, a Libertarian opponent’s questionable past surfaced, and he almost doubled his cash on hand.
Payne raised $25,300 total; all told, he has raised $55,346 this cycle, and has almost $52,000 cash on hand.
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But we saved the best — in terms of monthly haul — for last.
Palm Coast Rep. Paul Renner in HD 24 is on the track to the House Speaker post. And Northeast Florida’s brightest hope in the House is also favored by donors outside the region.
Proof positive: the impressive October hauls of Renner’s two political committees, “Florida Foundation for Liberty” and “Conservatives for Principled Leadership.”
The former brought in $70,500; the latter, $37,500 … adding up to a tidy sum of $108,000 — much more than an incumbent running in a deep-red seat against an underfunded Democrat needs for re-election.
