Quick Take
We take a look at the fundraising for the Assembly District 28 and 30 races and how the candidates compare as election day draws closer.
As we did Thursday with the races for District 3 and District 4 Santa Cruz County Supervisor, Lookout dives into the finance reports for the candidates for State Assembly District 28 and District 30. According to reports through the filing period that ended May 21, the nine candidates for the two open assembly seats — four in District 28, five in District 30 — have raised more than $1.4 million in monetary contributions.
About 30% of the new District 28 lies in Santa Cruz County, including most of the city of Santa Cruz and the North Coast, Scotts Valley and the San Lorenzo Valley; the rest is made up of the wealthy Santa Clara suburbs of Los Gatos and Monte Sereno as well as San Jose’s Cambrian Park and the fast-growing Silicon Valley bedroom community of Morgan Hill. District 30 stretches right along the coast from San Luis Obispo to Monterey and into a large section of Santa Cruz County.
The Assembly District 28 candidates — Gail Pellerin, Joe Thompson, Liz Lawler and Rob Rennie — have raised a total upward of $621,000. Rennie leads the charge with $273,661 in cash contributions. That is slightly more than Pellerin’s $265,307 and over $200,000 more than Lawler’s $64,350 and Thompson’s $18,369.
The state legal limits for legislative candidate contributions are $4,900 for individuals and $9,700 for small-contributor political action committees (PACs). Rennie received the maximum contribution from seven contributors. Pellerin had 11 such contributors, while Lawler and Thompson had one and zero, respectively.
In Assembly District 30, candidates Dawn Addis, Jon Wizard, John Drake, Vicki Nohrden and Zoë Carter have raised a total upward of $862,000. Addis is the front-runner, with the lion’s share of $515,350 raised. Wizard has raised $269,653, Carter has raised $52,683, Nohrden has raised $24,981 and Drake did not file.
Addis had 37 contributors who donated $4,900 or $9,700 depending on their status, three times as many as Wizard’s 12, and well above Carter’s four and Nohrden’s one.
Because the races cover a wider geography than the county supervisor races and more money is involved, many more of the top contributors for each campaign are PACs than in the supervisor races.
