The final campaign finance reports are in for the 97th Assembly District.
County Supervisor Bill Kramer has been busy raising money, raising $33,114 since the last campaign finance report. He has raised $46,067.45 since the start of the campaign and has spent $38,828.81. He currently has $8,977.83 on hand which safely makes him the anti-Nischke candidate. He loaned his campaign an extra $9000 during this reporting period bringing his total to $14,000 in personal loans to the campaign.
On the expenditure side, Kramer is running the classic paper and phone campaign. Direct mail is the bulk of his expense with some phones. Not a whole lot of waste in this budget, although I'm still puzzled why he is going with full-color glossy campaign mailers.
During one of our conversations prior to his running for assembly, I said to Bill Kramer that the Newcomer race set the going price on an assembly seat, $50,000. He laughed and said, "I know."
After a slow start to fundraising during the primary, Kramer has gotten to the level he was expected to reach. Coupled with a simple but direct campaign plan, a continued door-to-door campaign, and no more gaffes between now and the general election, there's no reason to believe Kramer will lose this election. And while we have had some fun at Kramer's expense on this blog and, okay, I actively worked for his primary opponent, he has worked hard enough to win and he deserves to win.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Kramer's opponent has been busy as well. Steve Schmuki raised $16,837.10 during the last campaign finance period bringing his year to date total $27,019.47 Year to date he has spent $15,066.17, $13,645.78 of it during the last reporting period. Interestingly, Schmuki has made no loans to his campaign. Whether it means he's not financially in a position to do so, or that he doesn't believe he can win, or he was waiting until the last minute to see what Kramer had on hand, it's hard to say. Schmuki was also the beneficiary of the taxpayer supported public campaign finance fund to the tune of $7,515.63.
On the expenditure side, Schmuki is doing an absentee ballot campaign, some Spanish language campaign literature and the typical direct mail campaign. He also paid $1,412.00 for the "insertion of post-it notes" to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I guess he was trying to remind the editors to endorse him. It didn't work.
One thing that stuck out after reading both campaign finance reports was the donations by Anselmo Villarreal of La Casa de Esperanza. Villarreal was on Kramer's list of endorsements. However, Villarreal donated $250 to Kramer and $300 to Schmuki. Hey Anselmo, if you endorse a guy, the least you can do is give him the same amount of money you gave his opponent.
