The Money Race for City Council

Candidates file campaign finance reports 30 days before elections. For the City of Richardson, that means all candidates in contested races for City Council, including mayor, have filed reports. In a recent post, I looked at the money race for mayor. In this post, I'll focus on the other City Council races. We'll look at the Richardson ISD later.

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Here's how the field looks 30 days out, ranked by total political contributions:

Total Political Contributions

Dan Barrios	Place 3	$14,629.56
Curtis Dorian	Place 1	$10,401.00
Stephen Springs	Place 3	$6,875.00
Ken Hutchenrider	Place 5	$3,915.00
G. Scott Waddell	Place 1	$3,755.00
Todd Hunter	Place 5	$1,961.70

Note that incumbents might have cash left over from prior campaigns, so contributions this cycle may not tell the whole story on how much they can spend this cycle.

Now for some observations about the sources of these contributions.

Place 1:

G. Scott Waddell's report shows nothing requiring further comment. Oh, except that Waddell didn't sign his report. That's careless.

Curtis Dorian shows a contribution of $100.00 from Mayor Paul Voelker. He also received $100.00 from former mayor Stephen Mitchell. He shows contributions of $500.00 and $100.00 from Gayla Von Her [sic] and Charles Eisemann. Von Ehr and Eisemann are members of the Richardson Coalition. These are all important people in Richardson politics.

Place 3:

Dan Barrios lists 84 contributors (if my quick count is correct), by far the most of any candidate. The largest contribution is $1,036.67 from Catalina E. Garcia, MD. Garcia is Trustee, Dallas College District 1. Next is $1000.00 from Domingo Garcia, former Dallas City Council member.

Stephen Springs lists contributions totaling $5,000.00 from Mehrdad Mazaheri. Mazaheri is the property owner who had a long fight with the City over his application to build an apartment complex targeted at UT Dallas students north of UT Dallas. The Wheel covered it extensively for two years. It was at City Plan Commission meetings that I first observed Stephen Springs at work and was impressed by his knowledge and professionalism. Maybe Mazaheri wants to see such talents on City Council as well. Springs lists an in-kind contribution (donation of event space) of $1,000.00 from Lockwood Distilling Co. IANAL, but it appears that corporations might not be legally able to donate to candidates (Texas Ethics Commission). In-kind contributions aren't exempt from this law, as far as I know, but IANAL, so who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Springs has loaned $10,000.00 to his own campaign.

Place 5:

Todd Hunter lists just three contributors, the biggest being $1,261.70 from Tommy Crowder of Raleigh, NC. He has loaned $2,100.00 to his own campaign.

Ken Hutchenrider lists one contribution of $100 from former mayor and long-time council member Stephen Mitchell. The Richardson Firefighters Association gave $1,000.00. Hutchenrider lists one contribution of $5.00 from "Ken Min LLC". That's curious because $5.00 is unusually small, so small that it probably doesn't need to be itemized. And LLCs might not be legally able to donate to candidates (Texas Ethics Commission).

Conclusion:

There are some curious facts, here, from which a story could perhaps be woven, but mostly it just looks like local politics at work, in the best sense of that. There's no sign of undue influence being sought, no sign of outside forces trying to take over a local city council. For that, I am happy.