With the next round of election finance statements due Thursday, Berkeleyside took a look at which City Council candidates have kept their spending local for campaign materials and services.
Not surprisingly, candidates posted their largest expenses to date for the November 2012 election during the year’s second filing period, from July 1 through Sept. 30. The statements due Thursday will include donations received and expenses from Oct. 1 to Oct. 20. Statements for all the races are public and can be downloaded from the city’s website.
We focused on spending on campaign paraphernalia, literature and mailings; consultant fees; polling services; professional services; print advertising; and website-related costs. The charts and descriptions below reflect these primary categories, not the entire amount of spending in the period. (Unless otherwise noted, we did not include office expenses, donation-related fees, fundraising event costs, filing statements or campaign workers’ salaries, which, even when combined represented a small part of overall expenditures.)
Most of the candidates in the mayoral race, as well as in the District 2, District 3 and District 5 contests, spent the bulk of their money in the East Bay. Scroll down for details on those four races.
The two exceptions were Mayor Tom Bates and District 5 council candidate Sophie Hahn, who has championed shopping local as one aspect of her platform. (We’ve left out candidates and races for which minimal financial information was available, or whose spending was negligible.)
Spending in the mayor’s race
Of the nearly $20,000 Bates spent in the above-noted categories, $6,000 went to a Washington, D.C.-based research firm for polling and survey research, and $1,670 went to a San Jose-based printer for walk cards to hand out to voters. Nearly $8,000 went to a San Francisco-based firm for consulting fees and lawn signs, $1,600 paid for lawn signs made in Richmond, and the rest (about $2,500) was spent in Berkeley on campaign literature.
Councilman Kriss Worthington spent the majority, more than $12,000, of his nearly $17,000 in expenses in Berkeley, on brochures and database set-up and management. His campaign spent about $4,300 in Petaluma on election-related literature, and another $300 in Washington, D.C., on web design.
Candidate Jacquelyn McCormick spent more than $6,000 of $10,393 in Berkeley, primarily on campaign literature. [Editor’s Note: That amount also includes a $795 payment to Berkeleyside for advertising.] Most of the rest of McCormick’s dollars, about $4,100, went to San Francisco for campaign consulting fees.
Spending in District 2
Incumbent Darryl Moore spent about $1,100 in Berkeley (on literature and walking materials), and another $3,400 in San Leandro on consulting services, of roughly $4,500. Opponent Adolfo Cabral spent his total $336 in expenses in Berkeley on campaign literature and materials, as well as web services. Denisha Delane, who also is running for a council seat in District 2, did not report expenses in the categories noted above. (Her less-than-$800 in fundraising-event costs were, however, spent in Berkeley.)
Spending in District 3
Incumbent Max Anderson spent nearly $3,500 of his reported $6,180 in Berkeley on campaign literature, and paid $1,602 to Sphinx Graphics in Petaluma for the same purpose. Eighty dollars went to an Augusta, GA-based company for robo-calls. Challenger Dmitri Belser spent, in all, nearly $700 on literature (about $420 in Berkeley and $250 in Albany).
Spending in District 5
Incumbent Laurie Capitelli made most of his payments in the East Bay; about $4,300 went to a campaign literature designer in Albany. In Berkeley, Capitelli invested in envelope printing, campaign hats, and mailers, to the tune of nearly $3,700.
He spent about $2,000 on a mailer out of Emeryville, and a bit more than that on lawn signs that were printed in Richmond, Calif. Capitelli also spent $825 on San Francisco-based photography services.
Challenger Sophie Hahn, according to her expenditure statements, spent about $42 in Berkeley on campaign costs in the categories noted above. She spent the bulk of her money in San Rafael, about $5,000, on literature costs. Hahn paid a Fairfield, Calif.-based campaign consultant $2,000, and another $1,500 to an Oakland-based campaign consultant.
About $1,555 went to Texas to the Inovar Packaging Group, followed by about $1,000 to Utah (Always Grows Greenhouse Supplies), roughly $520 to Novato in internet-related services, and about $500 to San Francisco for accounting services and a print advertisement.
The Hahn campaign spent about $250 in Emeryville on campaign materials; about $150 at the Arizona-based Dr. Don’s Buttons, Badges, & More; $110 in El Cerrito at Orchard Supply Hardware; and paid $54 to a chocolate fountain sales company based in Idaho.
Visit Berkeleyside’s Voter’s Edge Berkeley for complete coverage and tracking of the city’s 10 ballot measures. Visit Berkeleyside’s Election 2012 section to see all our coverage in the run-up to Nov. 6.
