Top spenders pull in the most votes in county supes race
The winners for three seats on the San Benito County Board of
Supervisors are old news. The June 3 election produced three clear
winners in Margie Barrios, Anthony Botelho and Jaime De La
Cruz.
And while local elections are decided by a simple majority vote,
anyone who puts any stock in the old bromide,
”
follow the money
”
knows there’s at least one other, unofficial, way of measuring
the vote.
Top spenders pull in the most votes in county supes race
The winners for three seats on the San Benito County Board of Supervisors are old news. The June 3 election produced three clear winners in Margie Barrios, Anthony Botelho and Jaime De La Cruz.
And while local elections are decided by a simple majority vote, anyone who puts any stock in the old bromide, “follow the money” knows there’s at least one other, unofficial, way of measuring the vote.
If money isn’t everything, it sure goes a long ways at the polls.
The widest margin of victory went to Jaime De La Cruz, the incumbent in District 5, which covers central and west Hollister. De La Cruz also won the spending race.
De La Cruz spent $22,982 as of May 17. But he was the only candidate to file in 2007, when he spent $24,547. Add them up and it cost De La Cruz a whopping $55.59 for each of the 855 votes he received.
In comparison, his opponent, Marian Cruz, received $5,930 by May 17, or $11.13 for each of the 533 votes received.
Political candidates who receive more than $1,000 in contributions are required to file forms disclosing what they’ve received, what they’ve spent and the names of all donors of $100 or more.
The last forms filed arrived just before the election, covering a period from Jan. 1-May 17. Last minute spending and contributions will be told in a new round of reports due July 31.
But two-and-a-half weeks before the election a clear pattern emerged. For the purposes of this comparison, votes received were divided into either the amount received or the amount spent, whichever is greatest, under the assumption that money in a campaign account is likely to get spent.
District 2, the San Juan-Aromas area supervisorial seat, produced a startling contrast. Botelho received $22,213 in contributions, equivalent to $17.90 for each of his 1,241 votes. Opponent Anthony Freitas was the county’s value leader. Freitas had $1,000 available, or $1.01 per voter for his 988 tally.
Another clear financial winner was District 1 candidate Grant Brians, who placed second in a three-way race behind winner Barrios. Brians ran such a shoestring campaign that he didn’t meet the $1,000 filing threshold for May 17.
Brians said this week that his entire campaign cost him some $1,100 by election day, or just $2.40 for each of his 457 votes.
Barrios received 862 votes and received $19,380 in contributions, equivalent to $22.48 per vote.
Bonnie Flores-Voropaeff received 264 votes and had collected $1,545 by May 17, averaging to $17.22 per vote.
It’s said that once upon a time, when some elections had the reputation of being less than scrupulous, that a cigar or a beer could buy a vote.
Today’s stringent reporting process is intended to keep campaigns more honest, but one thing hasn’t changed. The spending leaders swept all three contested supervisorial seats.
