The reason one should never use just one source is because the following analysis could come from faulty or misleading news reports such as the one I found (I wrote the article based on the news source, only to check the numbers and find some interesting truths explained at the end of this post after the article link) :
So the fund raising totals were reported yesterday, and some candidates did better than others. Some candidates made themselves to be hypocrites while others made themselves to look stupid (and I don't mean by the numbers they raised, but how they raised them). For example Les Otten a few months back mentioned how Poliquin had given himself $100,000. Well, turns out this time he gave himself more than $586,000. Yet, the award for just plain ridiculous goes to Rosa Scarcelli.
Opening my mail, the usual campaign reports were all there. However, with Bruce Poliquin raising a grand total of $633,593, I was rather stunned to see this quote in Rosa's email:
You may have already received the message below, but I'd like to share some exciting news with you. The campaign finance reports released yesterday contained a huge surprise: Rosa emerged as the top fundraiser in both parties.
Quote over. How her email didn't say how much she actually raised. I feel they are intentionally lying. Because she in fact raised only $258,465. Now, I'm no Ph.D. scholar, but $633,000 is a bit bigger than $258,000.
Part of Rosa's money is also in loans, the amount really doesn't matter ($16,300). The principle of funding a campaign on liquidity is simply stupid. It sounds like how our current state legislature plans to make up the deficit in our budget.
Which is why I also condemn Paul LePage for taking more loans than Scarcelli with $20,000 out of his $61,115 raised. Fiscally responsible Republicans would know what a safe investment would be. A campaign for any political office is never a safe bet, as the win by Scott Brown proved last night. Thus, LePage shows that if he has Conservative ideals they are certainly not based in sound economic policy.
Matt Jacobson is holding on with a steady campaign that will lose traction as the other candidates work harder and out perform him in many ways. His reported total was $88,400.
Donn Dion (now out of the race) wasted $2,500 of supporters money. I think she'll just transfer it over to her other campaign but her switch seems rather bipolar and power driven.
So the clear money front runners are Bruce Poliquin and Les Otten. However, Poliquin's lead is based on grass roots support for his common sense leadership. Les Otten is self-financed. Rosa Scarcelli has a grass roots base, but clearly she lacks common sense. It is clear her supporters are Democrats.
The other Democrats are hoping clean election funding will save their lack of an energized base. None raised more than $100,000 and the leading seed money raiser was Elizabeth Mitchell with $70,000 raised. For the Democrats it goes downhill from there, fast. John Richardson was $25,000 under Elizabeth, and several candidates didn't even report (due to entering so late).
I'll have the overall rankings later today.
Source:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2010/01/20/gops_poliquin_boasts_biggest_war_chest_in_maine_governors_race/
Note, the data in the article is actually misleading and inaccurate. What? A liberal news source misleading readers? Never......
I'll have the real data in realistic comparisons tomorrow. In case you didn't know the article uses Poliquin's total fund raising and others quarterly funding, and others on hand funding. So in reality you're comparing the candidates in the article on different things.
Its like comparing cars but only getting fuel mileage from one, age from another, and price for the third and then picking a winner. That is what Boston.com did in that article in comparing out candidates. So be very aware of news, and always use more than one source.