Editor's Note: Yesterday, I had published a preliminary summary from Eric Kurta showing the campaign contibutions for the Mayoral election and its candidates in the November election. The figures were correct from the perspective of the elections that it counted. I followed up with a crude calculation that counted dollars per vote but only counted the votes from the last election against the total campaign contributions. I however, did not count the votes from the other previous elections. This effected the calculations for only Dawn and Beth. Several readers asked for revision and Eric has independently sent me this revised summary.
Revised Summary from Eric Kurta:
I've given this project some thought and revised my approach (and checked my numbers carefully).
I've totaled dollars spent and votes received for all elections in 2009 - May, June, November - and determined the amount spent per mayoral vote. Zimmer ran three campaigns, Mason two, and all others one.
I decided to include expenditures spent by the Mayor/Council slates as well - the mayoral candidate heads the slate and benefits from campaign spending (Zimmer and Mason had separate Mayor and Mayor/Council funds).
Cammarano's last and possibly biggest filing is not available. We may never know how much he ended up spending.
Footnote: In 2005, the Roberts Team (Roberts, Cammarano, Ramos, Labruno) spent $1.5 million (!) for two elections (May and June). Roberts received a combined total of 9,564 votes from the May election and June runoff. That's $158 per vote.
For additional comparison NYC Mayor Bloomberg just spent $102 million ($183 per vote), making him the top-spending self-financed politician in US history. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34180267/ns/politics-more_politics/
I think this illustrates things more clearly.
Eric
Revised chart includes all three 2009 Mayoral Elections in votes and expenditures
If you use just the 11/3 election, the correct #’s, using final vote tally (including absentees and provisionals) and the 11/23 ELEC expenditures (not contributions – Pupie had $40,000 left in the bank and Dawn had $10,000 as of the date of the report) are as follows:
Beth $567,472 spent for 3105 votes: $182.76 per vote
Pupie $283,192 spent for 2730 votes: $103.73 per vote
Glatt $105,699 spent for 1403 votes: $75.33 per vote
Nathan $39,130 spent for 574 votes $68.17 per vote
Dawn $146,572 spent for 5739 votes $25.54 per vote
Hoboken Journal Second Annual Awards Online Banquet for Most Efficient Mayoral Campaign in its Third Leg
The award goes to........ (more drumroll/cowbell)
Dawn Zimmer at $28 per vote. (includes team committee reports and votes and expenses from all three campaigns). Or for just the final election, $25.5 per vote. Campaigns under the ELEC file limit of $4000 were not elligible for my award.
And not to pile it on but the least efficient campaign goes to Beth Mason who spent nearly $1 million to come in at $187 per vote. That is an amazing difference between the top two candidates. Again this calculation includes all of the mayoral elections for the year of 2009.
Editor's comment: I thought it was important to get a better calculation to the readers so I have reposted the article again. The numbers have changed but the point remains the same. Money can't buy you an election in this town. Not anymore. ◦
