Colorado does a great job of managing elections, with so much data made available to the public. Financial data is tracked via TRACER, a great website with comprehensive data on donations and expenses for campaigns. The most recent filing was due yesterday, so with this new data, here are some observations.
The fundraising leaders are clearly the three challengers; here are the fundraising totals from highest to lowest.
- Seth Bryant: $24,975.65 raised
- Keegan Barkley: $22,682.38 raised
- Mike Knott: $22,613.29 raised
- David Illingworth: $14,971.03 raised
- Mick Bates: $10,978.24 raised
- Cassie Kimbrell: $9,622.36 raised
Each side is running as a slate of three candidates, so another useful comparison is the total per slate. In that case, the three incumbents (Bates, Kimbrell, Illingworth) have raised $35,571.63, while the three challengers (Bryant, Knott, Barkley) have raised almost double that, $70,271.32!
The other interesting data point is the average contribution. Despite Bryant, Barkley, and Knott raising nearly twice what the incumbents (Bates, Kimbrell, Illingworth) they’re trying to defeat this election have, their average contribution was around half of the incumbents’. Here are the average contributions, again ranked from highest to lowest:
- Mick Bates: ~$168 average contribution, from 58 individual supporters
- David Illingworth: ~$161 average contribution, from 87 individual supporters
- Cassie Kimbrell: ~$129 average contribution, from 66 individual supporters
- Seth Bryant: ~$80 average contribution, from 215 individual supporters
- Keegan Barkley: ~$77 average contribution, from 225 individual supporters
- Mike Knott: ~$75 average contribution, from 220 individual supporters
(note – these averages are approximate and do not account for donations from the candidate themselves to their election committee)
So in summary, the three challengers (Seth Bryant, Keegan Barkley, and Mike Knott) are raising nearly double the amount of money the incumbents are, and doing so through a large number of smaller donors. The incumbents are relying on a small number of larger donors to fund their campaigns.
There are two Independent Expenditure Committees registered to support the incumbents. The only one reporting donations currently is Teller County for School Choice. They’ve raised $3,700 so far, and while they are not yet reporting any expenses, they do owe the state of Colorado $550 in late fees for not filing their reports on time (that’s 15% of their total raised so far). David Illingworth himself has racked up a large quantity of fines for late filing; we’ll dig into and summarize that at a future date (but it’s all visible on the TRACER website if you want to explore it yourself).
Numerous times, the board has declared the opposition to their actions to be the part of “a small group of radicals”. They’ve downplayed the magnitude of opposition and repeatedly talked about having widespread support. These fundraising stats do not appear to support those claims.
Ballots are mailed out around the middle of this month, and due November 7th. You can track the status of your ballot, from mailing to being accepted, at this website. VOTE!