A Dollar-by-Dollar Breakdown of the City Council Candidates

I wrote the other day about the difficulties faced by city council candidates this year. Now I’ll add some numbers to that analysis.

Below are the amounts that each of the 48 city council candidates had in their campaign accounts at the end of July, as reported by their banks to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

Bear in mind as you peruse the figures that one decent, targeted, city-wide mailing can cost upwards of $30,000 to produce and send. I’m struck by the incumbents, who aren’t exactly stockpiling their war chests—although I suppose those who tend to do so are the ones who have taken their ambitions to the mayoral race.

I went back and found that in the last similar at-large preliminary, in 2005, the eight candidates who eventually made it through the preliminary had a combined total of over $500,000 in their accounts at this point. The top eight at-large accounts today have a total of well under $400,000—and they haven’t spent as much as those ’05 candidates had.

It’s actually the district races that have produced some of the top-raising challengers, including second-time candidate Suzanne Lee and first-timer Josh Zakim.

Notes: Incumbents are marked with (i). Amount raised includes self-funding. Charles Yancey’s campaign account listed here is the same one he is using to run for mayor. OCPF is missing Martin Keogh’s bank reports; his cash-on-hand figure is supplied by his campaign.