More Detail on MA-05 Q1 Fundraising

The first quarter fundraising reports for federal candidates were due over the weekend, and I had a chance to digest them a little bit. All the candidates' donations, except for David O'Brien's are reported on the FEC's website. O'Brien had previously told the Lowell Sun that he had not started fundraising in Q1. In addition, no Republican candidates for the fifth district raised any money in the first quarter of 2007, however Lawrence Mayor Michael Sullivan has recently formed an exploratory committee so he could potentially start fundraising. Here are each candidate's fundraising numbers, along with their current cash on hand and number of unique donors.

Candidate	Raised Q1	COH	Donors
Donoghue	88,250.00	413,250.00	115
Finegold	306,255.00	310,962.53	222
Tsongas	331,710.00	309,222.27	335
Eldridge	108,330.00	106,355.06	124
Micelli	10,700.00	10,593.00	6
O'Brien	0.00	0.00	0

Note that of Eileen Donoghue's total, $325,000 of it was a loan to herself. Also, Niki Tsongas spent the most money, burning through about $22,000 (mostly on consultants) to leave her with only the third highest cash on hand. Perhaps more importantly, though, Tsongas has the lead in the number of unique individual donors (not counting PACs or other committees). It also looks like Tsongas is getting a number of dupicate maximum donations -- half for the primary and half for the general -- because there a quite a few donors giving a total of $4,600. In all Tsongas raised $277,810 exclusively for the primary and $54,900 that can be used for the general only. No other candidate has raised money for the general election.

Also interesting is the percentage of donations coming from both out of state and out of district. The table below shows where the candidates are getting their money.

Candidate	In state	Out of State	In District	Out of District
Donoghue	90.31%	9.69%	65.38%	34.62%
Eldridge	78.15%	21.85%	58.79%	41.21%
Finegold	80.78%	19.22%	33.64%	66.36%
Miceli	100.00%	0.00%	0.00%	100.00%
Tsongas	91.75%	8.25%	26.42%	73.58%
Total	86.15%	13.85%	36.61%	63.39%

You can see from this that Jamie Eldridge and Barry Finegold have each raised about one out of every five dollars from outside of Massachusetts. When you narrow the geography to the district level, however, you can see that nearly three-quarters of Niki Tsongas' money has come from outside the fifth district. In addition, all of James Miceli's six donors are from his hometown of Willmington, which is outside the district. Eileen Donoghue does the best with nearly two-thirds of her funds coming from inside the fifth.

Keep in mind that these are just the ratios for the first quarter fundraising and are likely to change as the election nears. The next round of FEC reporting should be available in July and that should provide a clearer picture of where the candidates' campaign cash is coming from.