Shawn Bagley is no novice at fundraising and political organizing.
The Salinas produce broker was a superdelegate at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, one of those mysterious people casting a vote in the Electoral College, for President Obama.
He serves as regional director of the Central Coast for the California Democratic Party, and was instrumental in bringing VP Joe Biden to Carmel for a 2012 presidential election fundraiser.
Now Bagley is running for office himself, but is lagging in fundraising.
He's challenging incumbent Republican State Sen. Anthony Cannella for control of a vast district straddling five counties, and which includes a portion of the Central Valley, all of San Benito County and the Salinas Valley.
With the primary approaching tomorrow, Bagley has raised $24,000. Of that, nearly half—$10,000—came from the SLO Democratic party, and another $5,000 came from the candidate himself.
Cannella raised about eleven times more than that this cycle—$258,000—but thanks to a large ending balance leftover from his last race, Cannella's got nearly $1 million in the bank.
Cannella's contributors include a number of PACs, particularly heavy on the insurance industry, agriculture, and construction trades.
Among his donors: California Association of Health Plans PAC , Personal Insurance Federation of California Agents and Employers PAC and the Disability PAC (sponsored by the Association of California Life and Health Insurance) gave $2,000 each.
The California Medical Association PAC and pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America PAC also gave.
There are also a number of corporations in the mix, like Yum! Brands, Blue Shield, 7-Eleven, PepsiCo, HealthNet, Safeway, Taylor Fresh Foods and Chevron.
Though political observers generally view Cannella's seat as safe, the Democrats may be deploying a common strategy—to funnel money away from other Republican races. That appears to be working, considering Jean Fuller for Senate, Tom Harman for the Board of Equalization, Mimi Walters for Senate and Ted Gaines for Senate also each donated in excess of $4,000.
The California Republican party gave Cannella $26,000 this year.
Spending to date has been sparse, but is likely to ramp up after the primary June 3. With only two candidates, the race will go to a runoff in November.
(1) comment
This is always the conundrum of campaigns, large and small: they require large sums of MONEY just to be heard and yet candidates that represent the "un-moneyed", working people have a huge challenge trying to raise money from people who simply do not have it. How can these voices be adequately represented in local and Federal government?
The ability to raise money is sometimes seen as a bellwether for the viability or support of a candidate. I am not sure that is true or fair to suppose. The end result of this thinking is that moneyed people are heard not only through their vote but through their dollars; un-moneyed people have only their vote. Candidates who represent the people with fewer resources find it much harder to be heard in our current campaign system - and the issues that are important to them are drowned out by reports of how much money a candidate is able to raise rather than the content of their platform.
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