Diving into the data, there's some interesting information, notably the fundraising disparity between the candidates in City-Parish Council District 3.
The state Ethics Administration has posted on-line the campaign finance reports submitted by candidates for City-Parish Council and other offices. The deadline for candidates to submit reports - either scans of hand-written reports or electronically filed reports - was Sept. 22.
Diving into the data, there's some interesting information. Among the surprises - to us anyway - in the CPC races is the huge disparity in contributions to the candidates in District 3. Incumbent Councilman Brandon Shelvin, as of Sept. 19 when he filed the report, had taken in a total of $21,475 in contributions and had more than $15,000 in funds on hand. His competitor, Carencro City Manager Lloyd Rochon, had only received $500 in contributions (from the time he qualified on Sept. 8 till he filed Sept. 19) - from Bacque Family LLC - and had only $243 in cash at his disposal. Rochon's report shows he candidate loaned his campaign nearly $2,000.
In District 8, challenger Craig Spikes has mounted a well-funded campaign relative to incumbent Councilman Keith Patin, and in fact has more cash reserves than Patin heading into the final furlong. Spikes raised a total by the end of the reporting period of $14,388 compared to Patin's $16,520, but while Patin had $3,448 cash on hand, Spikes had $7,812.
In District 9, incumbent Councilman William Theriot collected a total of $20,970 and had a substantial $18,781 on hand while his competitor, real estate agent Walter Campbell, collected $10,125, with $6,339 on hand. Theriot's report shows he loaned his campaign $2,000. (Some candidates filed scanned reports while others filed electronically, so you'll sometimes need to jump between the two to compare candidates within a district.)
Both Spikes and Theriot are TEA Party-backed.
We'll be combing through the reports over the next few days. More to come. In the meantime, the reports can be viewed here by choosing either "Scanned Reports" or selecting from options under the "Electronically Filed Reports" heading.
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