Jerry Brown sent out a very bland email yesterday trumpeting his financial success to spam boxes across the state. Not that it isn’t big news or anything, he’s got a fairly large chunk of cash. Apparently, Google’s spam filter thought the message was just too boring. The numbers themselves say something quite clearly.
* 4.9 million raised since July 1, 2009
* $8.3 million raised for all 2009
* $12.1 million cash on hand
This says a few things. First, that Brown’s burn rate is remarkably low. He’s spent just over a third of a million dollars in this campaign. Dude is seriously cheap. You could say that is a good thing, but as Robert pointed out yesterday, Brown needs to start reaching out to younger voters. He can traffic on his fame from the 1970s for only so long. At some point he needs to spend a bit of cash to, you know, let the state know that he’s running for something.
These would be very impressive numbers, in any other year. However, given that whichever Republican wins what is looking like a bloody primary will still have plenty of cash. In the likely event of a Whitman victory, she has said that she intends on spending $150 million of her own money to buy the race. Ordinarily, Brown’s numbers would be a pretty solid pace.
But this year isn’t your ordinary year, and Whitman isn’t your ordinary Republican. But, don’t worry, Jerry Brown will run an aggressive campaign…for whatever office he’s running for.
“Jerry Brown has a broad network of supporters all across the state of California,” said Brown Campaign Manager Steve Glazer. “We expect to have the resources to mount an aggressive campaign in 2010.”
Is cash spent per vote. Plenty of people have spent tons of money per vote and still lost to someone who spent fewer dollars per vote – they just spent it more wisely.
It remains to be seen whether Brown will be one of them. Certainly whoever they’re paying to send emails to spam boxes doesn’t exactly seem worth the expense.
He’s trying to make it look like Meg is trying to buy the Governor’s office, which if she spends $150 Million what do you call that???
I’m not really worried and its fairly early to try and spend money to make connections. I think he’ll be fine and he’ll start to make some noise here pretty soon, more than likely not until Spring time.
Not worried either, tends to run an aggressive campaign and he’s generally liked in California, that’s why we can trot out a retread like JB and he’ll have a better shot at winning than Meg will.
Republicans have largely made JB errors in judgment much worst and of course he can point to fact the State had plenty of money after his last term… Which is true as long as he can distance himself from how he did it…