How are Santa Cruz County supervisor candidates spending their money?
For the politically nerdy (whether by profession or obsession), last week marked a particularly exciting election cycle checkpoint: the campaign finance report deadline.
What wonders these PDF documents contain. My colleague Max Chun and I relied on them in our Thursday story about how successful the larger Santa Cruz County campaigns have been this year in getting people to open their wallets and fund their candidacy or cause. But that’s only half the story: These campaign finance reports also tell how and where that money is spent.
For instance, Max and I reported that District 2 supervisor candidate Kim De Serpa had outraised her opponent, Capitola Mayor Kristen Brown, by roughly $30,000 since the start of their campaigns last year. However, the latest campaign finance report shows Brown has outspent De Serpa so far by a little over $5,100.
How the candidates spend contrasts as well. Between July 1 and Sept. 21, De Serpa spent $1,076 on Facebook ads, while Brown split her digital ad spending of $759 between Meta (Facebook’s parent company) and Google. De Serpa spent $5,684 on campaign signs, $684 on texting campaigns and $137 on hiring a social media manager. Brown appears to be leaning more heavily on direct mail, spending over $900 on mailing and postage services. She also dropped $1,700 on her campaign kickoff party: $1,200 for catering, $500 for the band. The candidates have spent similarly on print advertisements in local newspapers, though De Serpa used her $2,600 all on ads in the Aptos Times, while Brown split her budget between the Aptos Times ($1,590) and Santa Cruz Good Times ($650).
In the District 5 race, Monica Martinez has outraised her opponent, Christopher Bradford, 3 to 1 and has outspent him by even more. Martinez has spent $83,709 to Bradford’s $25,541 since their campaigns launched last summer. In the most recent campaign finance report, which covers July 1 to Sept. 21, Martinez spent roughly $11,000, and major expenses included $3,000 on her campaign manager, Rachel Wells, and $5,200 on printing campaign materials. She also put $320 to Costco for fundraising, and $60 on Felton Donuts and Pastries.
Bradford’s $9,170 budget over that same period includes $500 on audio production for live streaming and video recordings and $2,048 on postcard printing as his major expenses. He also spent $306 on phone banking and texting, something Martinez did not do, $42 at Dollar Tree for candy to bring to a Fourth of July parade and $219 on Team Bradford T-shirts.
Max and I will be diving even deeper into these documents over the next couple weeks, so be sure to keep an eye out for more campaign finance stories as part of our ongoing election coverage. The next deadline for the candidates and campaigns to submit their forms is Oct. 24.
OF NOTE
Santa Cruz County and its largest union strike a deal: After tensions flared and the union’s threats to strike grew louder, Santa Cruz County and SEIU Local 521 announced Friday that they had reached a tentative agreement. If approved by a majority of union members, the new contract would include a 11.5% cost of living adjustment, combined, over the life of the three-year contract, and commitments from the county to enhance its health care coverage and boost its on-call and fatigue pay for workers in “high-demand positions like behavioral health.”
SEIU 521 represents roughly 1,800 county employees, from therapists in the behavioral health division to the people who oversee the animal shelter. SEIU 521 Chapter President Max Olkowski-Laetz called the contract a “major victory.” County spokesperson Jason Hoppin said the contract is worth around $41 million.
POINTS FOR PARTICIPATION
Weigh in on Workbench’s latest Santa Cruz proposal: Monday night at 6, the City of Santa Cruz Planning Department will host a virtual community meeting to garner feedback on local developer Workbench’s latest proposal: a six-story, 69-unit, mixed-use project at 1811 Mission St. You can access the meeting, via Zoom, by following this link.
City mulls 52,000-square-foot office/storage facility along Scotts Valley Drive: A slow week for the Scotts Valley City Council is punctuated by a proposal for a 52,250-square-foot commercial office/storage facility project. Planned for 125 Bethany Dr., which currently hosts a handful of commercial tenants, such as the Forte Vocal Academy, the two three-story buildings would include 10,000 square feet of office space and a 42,250-square-foot storage facility. The city council meets on Wednesday at 6 p.m. to discuss it.
ONE GREAT READ
The perils of polling, by Rob Wells for Time magazine
In newsrooms and journalism schools, I can think of two historical headlines editors and professors have regularly brought up in a moment of teaching. For all of the New York Post’s many journalistic shortcomings, its April 1983 headline “Headless Body In Topless Bar” still stands somewhere around the pinnacle of headline creativity and pun-ditry.
Then there is the Chicago Daily Tribune’s 1948 headline heard ‘round the world: “Dewey Defeats Truman,” a topper lacking creativity and, most importantly, factual accuracy. Despite what the Chicago Daily Tribune believed would happen, and its desire to be the first to get it out, New York Gov. Thomas Dewey did not defeat Harry Truman for the presidency. This headline teaches journalists about the importance of being right before being first.
In a recent article for Time magazine, Philip Merrill College of Journalism professor Rob Wells, whose wisdom I still rely on to this day (12 years after barely passing his class), digs up the Dewey headline as a plea to newsrooms and journalists around the country, as we hurtle toward Election Day.
“If anything, the danger of incorrect predictions might be higher in 2024 than in 1948 due to the unreliability and proliferation of polls, the pressure to publish first in our 24-7 news cycle, and the rampant disinformation circulating on social media,” Wells writes. “… On election night, there will be plenty of competition and an urge to be first. But journalists should listen to the veterans of the 1948 campaign: ‘The mailbags should have sat on the platform until the votes were counted,’ Bryant said.”