The calendar has turned over to September and, very soon, your television will be flooded with campaign commercials for the November midterm elections. You might as well prepare your self to hear a lot about Raul Ruiz (and his shitty car) – as his campaign has a truckload of money to spend leading up to the vote. His opponent, well, not so much.
Via the Desert Sun:
With $2.4 million cash on hand, incumbent Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-La Quinta, has a clear resource advantage heading into the final two months of the election for California’s 36th Congressional District. His opponent, Kimberlin Brown Pelzer, a Palm Springs Republican, has just $142,000 – or one dollar for every 17 dollars Ruiz has – to fuel the rest of her bid to unseat Ruiz.
I did the highlighting there on “fuel her campaign” (which Brown Pelzer has made almost entirely about something Congress has zero control over: the California gas tax). Very clever, Desert Sun and it didn’t go unnoticed. Well played.
On top of having a massive war chest advantage, Ruiz has both outraised and outspent Brown Pelzer throughout the campaign. Since the beginning of 2017, Ruiz has brought in $2.6 million and came into the cycle with nearly $1 million already in the bank. Since Brown Pelzer began her run for the seat in October 2017, she’s raised only $474,000. Ruiz has spent $1.1 million on his re-election bid, where Brown Pelzer has spent $335,000, less than one-third of Ruiz’ figure.
How did Ruiz score some much more coin? Well, more than half of Ruiz’s cash has come from PACs, which Brown Pelzer has only received just under $20,000 from.
A reminder: the candidate with the most money wins 94 percent of the time.
