Congressman, Can You Spare a Buck?

Despite 3 Congressional races in Washington State where Democrats were challenging Republicans last year, Washington’s six incumbent Congressmen ended the campaign year on Dec 31, 2006 with $2,693,833 in cash on hand.

It is not immediately clear why this is so because looking at the data on OpenSecrets.org and the Federal Election Commission shows that a total of $10,331,886 was raised by all Democrats running for Congress in Washington State in the last election cycle. And of the $10,331,886 raised, some $9,875,407 was reported as being spent by all 9 campaigns. The campaigns saw a net increase of $456,479 dollars as cash on hand not spent this cycle.

The startling truth is that the $2.7 million is the accumulated unspent cash on hand from all campaigns as of Dec 31, 2006, including the carryover from previous years. The 3 Democratic non-incumbent challengers had only $42,942 in cash left.

The $2.7 million represents some 21% of Democratic Congressional campaign money that was really available to be spent. Very little of this money came in after election day, but was available to help Democratic candidates.

One has to question why is such a critical year , when Democrats nationally were trying to regain control of the House and Senate, incumbent Democratic Congressmen in this state did not feel compelled, particularly by October, to spend everything they had available to help in the effort to regain control of Congress.

The November elections turned out to be a very close national referendum on Bush and the Republicans and the Democrats were picking up momentum. At stake was who controlled Congress and whether or Democrats would the Majority or Minority Party. Being the Majority Party meant having Democratic Committee Chairs, subpoena power and the ability to pass legislation. Being in the minority you weren’t even consulted by the Republicans on any bills.

This is not to say our six Democratic Congressman didn’t help but did they give it their all? Were they united in helping the Democrats fight to the finish or did they hold back? Except for Rick Larsen, they faced pretty weak opposition.

I will let you judge for yourself. Reported below are figures for each Congressman and their campaigns and the money raised and money spent helping other campaigns. Most of our Congressman helped in one form or another, just some did more than others.

Meanwhile in this state Democrat Darcy Burner and Republican Dave Reichert each raised just over $3 million in the WA CD-08 race last November. In the end Reichert narrowly edged Burner with 7341 more votes. Burner got 48.54% of the votes and Reichert got 51.46% of the votes.

Would Darcy Burner have won if she had received more money? We’ll never know but the issue is ripe for speculation. And what might a little more help for Peter Goldmark have done over in Spokane? Feel free to speculate.

In addition to helping directly, they could also have helped the effort to become the Majority Party in Congress by giving to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee (WSDCC) or to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) nationally or directly to the out of state Congressional campaigns of other Democratic challengers.

While these figures do not give a complete picture of the Congressmen’s overall campaign involvement, because Congressmen can also help by hosting fundraisers for others or help solicit contributions through other PACS, they do reflect on the issue of the $2.6 million surplus left in December. Below are these breakdowns.

In fact they seem to have done a complete boycott of the Wright/Hastings race. What is unfortunate about this is that the lack of Republican ethics was a high factor in voter’s decisions to oust the Republicans from Congress. Hastings was the Chair of the House Ethics Committee. His inaction and deliberate efforts to do nothing should have made him vulnerable to defeat.