Steve Welch: “How many supporters do I have? Hey! Look over there!” October 15 2009
According to this link at the Delco Times, Steve Welch has been claiming he raised $250k since early July for his Congressional runs. First, the one for the seventh district. And now the race in the sixth district, to replace Jim Gerlach. Or maybe he was just talking about the seventh back then. It’s hard to keep straight.
Along with that $250k, he says he matched that amount with his own money.
The problem is, this appears not to be true at all. At least to me. Perhaps I’m missing something.
According to recently released campaign finance records, Steve Welch raised $18,450 during the period covered by that article…from people not named “Steven Welch”. This is a far cry from $250k. Heck, it’s more than a decimal point off! And he did not return a single donation he received while running for the seventh district.
In total he has raised $46,150 from forty reported contributors. Interestingly, almost half of this money is from outside of Pennsylvania. Only seven of those forty contributors, in fact, even reside in the district he aspires to represent.
He also claims to have hundreds of other contributors who have contributed less than $200. This means those “hundreds” have contributed $7,080. I suppose its possible he found three hundred people who gave him small amounts of money falling under the limit invoking identity disclosure. That model certainly worked for Obama and Ron Paul. But seeing how we haven’t even finished the 2009 cycle yet, he has virtually no name recognition, and he’s only been running in the sixth for a few weeks, it seems unusual.
The important contrast here is with Curt Schroder. He raised almost $110k in just the last thirty days from over 140 reported individuals.
This is a blow to the Welch campaign, and they are apparently trying to put lipstick on a pig when they talk about fundraising. There aren’t that many ways to say “I gave myself a LOT of money!” Welch’s narrative is supposed to be about the political outsider with a groundswell of support from within the district. He is also fighting off accusations that he doesn’t live in the district, and is hence less in tune with the voters there.
But Schroder was able to raise twice what Welch did from over 140 reported individuals, and well north of 300 people total. Welch’s war chest, on the other hand, is comprised of about 92% of his own money, and over half of what remains is from out of state.
In other words, 96% of his support, as represented by his allegedly positive fundraising numbers, comes from himself and people who don’t even live in Pennsylvania, let alone the district.
That’s an outsider message, I bet, he would rather not emphasize.
(This has also been covered at Midnight Blue, here.)
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