LeAnna Cumber wins March in Jax mayoral fundraising race

Republican LeAnna Gutierrez Cumber launched her Jacksonville mayoral campaign in March, and that momentum carried the first-term Jacksonville City Council member to the best fundraising last month of any candidate.

That includes all filed candidates, as well as candidates expected to file at some point, such as Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce CEO Daniel Davis.

Between her campaign account and her political committee, Cumber raised a little more than $272,000 last month. Of that sum, $134,550 went to her campaign account, with the remaining $137,650 going to the Jax First committee.

Prominent donors include Steve Halverson, former chair of Haskell, who donated a total of $26,000; former state Rep. Jay Fant and various family members and related businesses; former Jacksonville General Counsel Jason Gabriel; and former congressional candidate Hans Tanzler III.

Cumber has raised just over $2.3 million between the two accounts, and has more than $2 million cash on hand. But she still has a lot of ground to make up on Davis, who is expected to enter the race. His Building a Better Economy political committee raised $151,500 in March and has roughly $3.75 million on hand. The Haskell Company and Summit Contracting chipped in $25,000 each.

A third Republican in the race, City Councilman Al Ferraro, made some incremental progress against long odds, raising more than $29,000 between his campaign account and his political committee, called Keep It Real Jax. This was Ferraro’s best month since last March.

Andrew Mayer of Murphy Pipelines donated $25,000 to the political committee.

Other candidates seem to have ground to make up, even as one major report is still due Monday night.

Democrat Donna Deegan had roughly $360,000 on hand between her campaign account and her Donna for Duval political committee at the end of February. We will update with March totals when they are available.

Independent candidates Omega Allen and Darcy Richardson also are in the mix.

Allen, running for Mayor for a third time, has raised a total of $8,787 in the campaign and has spent roughly half of that. She raised $2,437 in March, her second-best month thus far.

Richardson, a perpetual candidate for offices around the country, has $17.76 in his account thus far.

The 2023 mayoral campaign is still ramping up.

Qualifying week runs Jan. 9-13, 2023.

The First Election, which pits all qualified candidates against each other, is March 21, 2023. Assuming no one in the field gets more than 50% of the vote, the General Election is May 16, 2023.