Getting Close To The Finish Line *Update*

***Update Looks like I had the time wrong for the Mayor's rally. It was at 10AM. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The campaigns are gearing up for the final stretch run this weekend. The Mayor is having a rally at Margaret Tucker park at 1PM. Final mailings have been made. The GOTV plans are being implemented. The voting machines are being readied for the polling places. I am going to head over to the Town Hall parking lot this morning to do some taping and, possibly, interviews as the voting machines are packed up for transport.

There was a lengthy article in the Register this morning by Mark Zaretsky on the state of the mayoral race. As I've mentioned before the fund raising has been enormous on both sides with no overwhelming leader in the cash race. The Board of Education race is going to be very interesting this year with the 3rd line, Better Education for East Haven, slate competing for the nine BOE seats that are open.

Depending on the ability of yours truly to get the technology working, there might be a live feed on the blog election night from one of the polling places and Town Hall as the ballot totals are reported. Watch here to see if the crack team of geeks at the easthavenpolitics blog can get the feed up and running.

Random Thoughts on Fund Raising

A couple of things popped out at me from the fund raising summaries I posted yesterday. First, John Finkle raised 10 times as much in the October 1st thru 20th reporting period as the Mayor ($36,500 vs. $3,350). With all the campaign material coming out of the Mayor's campaign I was expecting a much higher fund raising total. The second thing I noticed was the fact that the challenger has out raised the Mayor by $10,000 overall ($88,000 vs. $78,000). This is even before the Register endorsement was published which is sure to bring even more money to Finkle's campaign war chest.

It may be an unfortunate byproduct of our electoral system but the money game is a reasonable way of telling how people think the race is going. If people think you are not going to win raising money is very, very hard. If they think you are going to win it is very easy. In the last 6 weeks it appears that the people that give money to campaigns in East Haven have decided that Finkle has a reasonable chance of winning. Tuesday night after 8PM we will know if they were right.

Party Finances

Here are the totals for the 2 Town Committees for this election season as of the latest filing:

Democratic Town Committee:
Raised:  $18,064
Spent:    $15,747
Cash on hand: $2,316

Republican Town Committee:

Raised:  $5,292
Spent:    $4,377
Cash on hand: $934

Campaign Finance

From the October 27th filing which covers the period October 1st thru October 20th:

Mayor Capone Almon
    10/1-10/20
    Raised:   $3,350
    Spent:     $3,599
    Aggregate
    Raised:   $78,605
    Spent:     $59,797
    Cash on hand:  $18,807

John Finkle
    10/1-10/20
    Raised:   $36,554
    Spent:     $24,729
    Aggregate
    Raised:   $88,120
    Spent:     $76,294
    Cash on hand:  $11,825

BOE - Recount Possibility

With 16 people running for 9 slots and a mayoral race within the margin of error I think the BOE race will end up in a recount. Normally the winning mayoral candidate brings in 6 members of the mayor's party. However, the mayoral race is not going to be a big win for either candidate so the BOE candidates will not be swept into office on the coattails of the mayor. That leaves the BOE candidates on their own to win. Even with big wins by a mayor the BOE race is almost always a closer affair with a small number of votes separating the candidate in 9th position (i.e. a winning candidate) and 10th position (the losing candidate). With this race I expect the entire field, Democrats, Republicans and Better Education candidates to be separated by 400-500 votes. I predict a large cluster of candidates for the 5th thru 12th positions will only be separated by 100-125 votes. That will trigger an automatic recount for the BOE. With any luck they can get it right on the 1st try this time.

Campaign Finance

This is turning into quite an expensive campaign. Here are some figures from the September 30th filings:

Mayor Capone Almon
Raised:$75,255
Spent: $56,197
Cash on hand: $19,057

John Finkle
Raised:$64,225
Spent: $51,575
Cash on hand: $12,649

As of September 30th the 2 campaigns have raised nearly $140,000. With all the mail pieces that have gone out in the last 2 weeks I am guessing that there was a huge chunk of new cash raised in the period 10/1 thru 10/20 by both sides.

BOE Election and Cutting

As I predicted here the process of candidates cutting each other in the BOE race is well underway. I have confirmation from sources that 2 Democratic candidates are running their own campaigns. This includes making up campaign material just for themselves and having family and friends encourage voters to just vote for thatone BOE candidate. There is a persistent rumor of a 3rd Democrat candidate doing the same thing which I have not been able to confirm. On the Republican side there is one candidate that I know is running an independent campaign. I also know that members of the 3rd line have been approached by more than 1 BOE candidate about getting votes from supporters of the 3rd line candidates to also support the Dem or Rep candidate. Each voter can vote for up to 6 BOE candidates. Since there are only 4 candidates on the 3rd line the Dem or Rep candidates have asked that they tell their supporters to use the other 2 votes to support the Dem or Rep candidate (and to screw the other Dem or Rep candidates in the process).

School Building Committee - October 20, 2009

Here is the video from the School Building Committee meeting last night. The meeting lasted just under 2 hours. If you want to skip the long, boring parts just jump to the last 15 minutes of Part 2.