Campaign finance filings show wide gaps

By Nancy Mitchell and Charlie Brennan
on October 12, 2011 4:36 am

Initial campaign finance filings show Denver school board candidate Happy Haynes has already raised more than $200,000, with three weeks remaining before Election Day.

Haynes is a former Denver City Council president and school district administrator whose family name also is well-known in education circles thanks to her mother, preschool pioneer Anna Jo Haynes. The candidate received $213,789 in donations between Oct. 28, 2010 and Oct. 6, 2011, according to reports filed with the secretary of state’s office Tuesday.

The figure dwarfs fund-raising by her four competitors – whose totals range from $244 to $16,790 – and it likely means a new record in city school board election totals.

Details by candidate

Denver school board candidates – At-large, District 1 and District 5
Douglas County school board candidates – District A, District C and District F
Jefferson County school board candidates – District 3 and District 4
Numbers in this story refer to monetary contributions except where noted
Click on “link to finance report” next to candidate names to see detailed filings

School board member Theresa Peña, whose citywide seat Haynes wants to fill, raised a total of $216,610 throughout her entire 2007 campaign. Mary Seawell, who won an at-large seat in 2009, raised an overall total of $240,605 – less than $30,000 higher than Haynes already has accumulated.

School board candidates file a second finance report on Oct. 28, covering contributions and expenditures made between Oct. 7 and Oct. 23. A final report is due Dec. 1, to include transactions in the final days of the campaign and through Nov. 26.

In the two other Denver school board races, wide margins also separate the candidates.

In the contest to represent southeast Denver, candidate Anne Rowe has raised $176,320 – more than three times the total reported by candidate Emily Sirota.

And in northwest Denver, candidate Jennifer Draper Carson reported total contributions of $124,346, or twice the total reported by incumbent Arturo Jimenez.

Jimenez was the only candidate to miss the 11:59 p.m. deadline, filing his report at 2:26 a.m., according to the secretary of state’s website. That could cost him a $50 fine.

Well-funded candidates share contributors

Haynes, Rowe and Draper Carson dismissed talk early in their campaigns that they represented a “slate” of candidates backed by pro-reform interests, but they share some big contributors.

Daniel Ritchie, CEO of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, contributed $26,000 to each of the three. Ritchie is former chancellor of the University of Denver and something of a senior statesman figure in education circles.

Henry Gordon, president of Strata Capital in Englewood, also gave $25,000 each to Haynes, Rowe and Draper Carson. Also lining up behind all three was Kent Thiry, CEO of DaVita Inc., who donated $11,000 to each. University of Colorado President Bruce Benson gave $10,000 to each. Benson, a former oilman and GOP fundraiser, has been active in education for years and once served as chair of the DPS Foundation.

And Scott Reiman of Hexagon Investments also gave $10,000 to each.

So one quintet of donors gave a combined $82,000 each to the same three candidates, all of whom have been endorsed by the Colorado chapter of Democrats for Education Reform and by Stand for Children.

Draper Carson and Haynes also are using the same two political consulting firms.

Haynes also received $10,000 from philanthropist Pat Stryker of Fort Collins, a major funder of Democratic candidates in partisan elections. Haynes reported a DPS record 546 individual donors, shattering previous DPS records for total donors. According to campaign spokesman Peter Schottenfels, 437 – or 80 percent – of those donors live in Denver and 99 percent in Colorado.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association endorsed only in the two district races and also contributed to their endorsed candidates.

Jimenez took in $24,000 from the DCTA small donor committee and another $6,000 from the Colorado Education Association small donor committee. Sirota received $22,500 from the DCTA committee.

For Jimenez, union money represented just over half of his total take, while it made up more than a third for Sirota.

Where the money’s being spent

The better-funded candidates are spending thousands of dollars on the less-expensive means of voter contact – primarily direct mailings, yard signs and campaign literature distributed at campaign events.

And those with the most money are not hesitating to pay for high-end consultants.

Haynes has paid $50,500 to Terra Strategies, a Des Moines, Iowa-based consultancy that has handled presidential campaigns for John Edwards, John Kerry, Al Gore and Richard Gephardt. She has spent close to another $9,000 to date with Denver-based RBI Strategies & Research.

Another Terra Strategies client is Draper Carson, who paid $30,142 to Terra Strategies in September. She’s also a RBI client and paid that firm $11,765 through Oct. 6.

Rowe’s finance report shows $7,500 spent so far to Mile High Public Affairs, whose president is veteran Denver political consultant John Britz.

Fundraising smaller in Dougco, Jeffco

As in years past, candidate fund-raising totals in Denver far outstrip those reported by candidates in Douglas and Jefferson counties. Haynes’ total-to-date is more than that reported by the four Jeffco candidates and the seven Dougco candidates combined.

In Jefferson County, two candidates who began campaigning in April reported far higher totals than their opponents, who campaign together as “the dads” and who did not register their candidacies until late August.

Candidate Jill Fellman reported $31,141.97 from more than 350 donors while Preston Branaugh, her opponent, raised $7,795 from fewer than 70 donors.

Similarly, candidate Lesley Dahlkemper raised $42,422 from more than 300 donors while her opponent, Jim Powers, reported $8,370 from fewer than 70 donors.

In Douglas County, the highest total reported is $20,820 – though the filings indicate the Republican Party-endorsed candidates are benefiting from two of Colorado’s most generous GOP donors.

Ed McVaney, founder and former CEO of J.D. Edwards software firm, and Ralph Nagel, president of investment firm Top Rock, have both given $10,000 to each of the three GOP candidates, who are pro-voucher.

Those contributions put the candidate far ahead of their opponents, who all oppose vouchers, for the first campaign finance reporting period.

McVaney and Nagel are long-time advocates of school choice as co-founders of the ACE Scholarships fund, which helps low-income families send their children to private schools. They also contributed heavily – $100,000 to $250,000 – to the failed 1998 effort to convince Colorado voters to give tax credits for private school tuition.

DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS AT-LARGE RACE