Republican PACs See Decrease In Campaign Contributions In New Mexico
WASHINGTON - Republicans running for different offices have not recently been receiving the amount of money they have expected like they have from past elections from political action committees.
Susana Martinez the current governor of New Mexico has a Political Action Committee and although she cannot run for third term for governor she can send fund towards candidates. This has had quite an influence on Republican elections in past years but has recently seen little money being donated. The Martinez PAC has received only $15,000 dollars in donations but has spent $51,587 dollars. This is much less than what they received in donations in 2015 with $331,000 dollars in contributions. The biggest contribution to Martinez’s PAC from April was Hanson Operating, an gas and oil company from Roswell that contributed $11 thousand dollars. Republicans are taking in a lot less money than what they have received in recent years but Democrats have raised an extraordinary amount of money in a short amount of time.
The Brian Egolf Speaker Fund, a Democratic PAC, has raised over $185,000 dollars in the past 6 months, a huge difference in contributions compared to the Martinez PAC. The fund has spent $119,000 dollars and $72,000 dollars has went to an campaign management firm that is headed by Meredith Dixon a Democratic fund raiser. The Senate Democrats have raised $104,595 since April even though they there are no senate races in 2018. They have spent only $32,000 dollars leaving $72,000 dollars left to spend to help other Democratic campaigns.
The two main candidates running for the governor's office are Michelle Lujan Grisham a Democratic Representative and Steve Pearce a Republican Representative. The two both have raised over $1 million dollars in campaign contributions since April. Grisham has raised $1.3 million dollars while Pearce has only raised slightly more than $1 million dollars. The other smaller candidates that are running for governor have raised over $500,000 each but they both took personal loans for their campaigns unlike Grisham and Pearce. Both of their loans were 50 percent of their entire campaign contribution.
In other smaller offices the Republicans are still raising less money than the Democrats. In the race for land commissioner the Democrat running for commissioner Ray Powell Jr. raised $81,470 and spent only $18,000 dollars. While the only Republican Patrick Lyons running for land commissioner raised $23,475 dollars and spent $16,665. Another area where the Republicans are raising less money than the Democrats.
The Republicans have raised significantly less money than their opponents in the past 6 months which is unusual. In recent years Republicans could usually gather enough funds to crush their opponents in the elections. However, this may not be the case in the 2018 governor election or the land commissioner election. So in the next election the Democrats can have a more significant impact on the election since they have more funds to put towards their candidates and use for campaigning, commercials, and advertisements.
