Establishment Backs Gist Over Finney
By Sean Evans, Chair and Professor of Political Science
Feb 5, 2015 -
If there was any doubt that the establishment in Jackson would be conflicted over whether to support Mayor Jerry Gist or former State Senator Lowe Finney, the recent fundraising reports ended that speculation. Despite supporting both candidates over the past eight years, the Jackson establishment is firmly in Mayor Gist’s corner. The question for the campaign is whether financial support of the Jackson establishment is enough for Gist to win.
To begin, both candidates did a fantastic job raising money in the first quarter of the campaign. The fact that both raised almost $120,000 each is quite impressive. To put this in context, there are people who run for the U.S. Congress who would be happy to raise $120,000 in one quarter and they have more people and more institutions from which to raise money. Both Mayor Gist and Senator Finney raised practically all of their money from individuals.
Second, the most surprising fact is that Gist outraised Finney but only be $3000 ($118,745 to Finney’s 115,519.1 There were many who thought that since Gist may not be ready for a fierce campaign because he has not had a competitive race since his initial election as Madison County Mayor in 2001 and he is older and has less energy than the younger Finney. This fundraising report rejects that idea. Gist has his fundraising operation, at least, working well.
But it is when you see who donated to whom, that you see that the Jackson establishment is behind Gist. If you look at his fundraising report, Gist’s donors are a who’s who of the Jackson establishment. Gist has support of business (e.g., Kirkland), bankers (e.g., Ayers, Grisham, Mansfield), developers (e.g., Brasfield, Campbell, Dement), business PACS that have relationships with the city, and quite a few members of the health community. Gist even has support from Republicans (e.g., Exum, Arnold) though this is probably not that surprising since Finney is a partisan Democrat. When you think about it though, Gist’s establishment support is expected. He is the incumbent and the incumbent is usually the favorite. Moreover, these are the business leaders that have business with the city and do not want to jeopardize that relationship by supporting the other candidate. To indicate the power of incumbency, we just have to look at the donations of Mike McWherter of Central Distributors. McWherter is Finney’s cousin but the McWherter family gave $3,000 to both campaigns. Perhaps, incumbency is thicker than (or just as important as) blood.
Yet, part of the establishment is hedging their bets by giving to Finney. Several of the developers also gave to Finney but their contributions were much less than what they gave to Gist (e.g., Dements gave $6K to Gist but $2K to Finney). But the bankers and other business leaders are strongly behind Gist. Overall, most of Finney’s money comes from attorneys with doctors second. Finney’s advantage with attorneys is not surprising due to his membership in the bar, service as a trial lawyer, and support for the trial lawyers’ position in the State Senate.
The financial reports are just a window onto the campaign. Both raised a solid amount of money and should be able to continue to raise money. I expect both campaigns will try to raise around $250,000 for the general election campaign and even more if they head to a runoff. But the reports also point to some concerns for the campaigns.
First, Gist raised a lot of money but he had only 120 donors and 1/3 of his money ($42K) came from fourteen families. He will need to expand his donor network beyond the establishment because he is tapped out on some of his donors, unless there is a runoff. The fact that there are not more small donors could be troubling. Mayor Gist has said that he has not really had a fundraiser and that these are just his friends rallying around him. That may be true but the reports show his “friends” are those who have business with the city and he needs to expand his network.
For Finney, he has an impressive 249 donors on his list which on first impression suggests that he has more grassroots support in Jackson. However, a closer look shows that 123 of his donors are not from Jackson. Thus, Finney only has slightly more local donors than Gist (126 to 108). However, his list does suggest some advantages. First, Finney’s largest donation was $1500 so he could potentially get another $1500 from his largest donor’s spouses and additional money from other supporters. Second, Finney has a much larger donor network to rely upon which may allow him to continue to raise money. Third, Finney has more cash on hand thanks to his ability to transfer $59K from his state senate campaign account. Of course, the primary problem is that almost half his donors are not from Jackson which suggests that Finney will have to work harder to increase his local financial support. His cash on hand advantage is also important because he has run campaigns that cover a larger area and he now has to focus solely on Jackson where he is not as well-known as Gist.
Overall, the financial reports suggest both candidates have strengths and weaknesses. This part of the campaign is the invisible primary where donors play a larger role as campaigns collect the resources to get their message out and create an organization to reach voters and get them to vote for the candidate. The candidates probably have about another month of heavy fundraising left. Beginning in March, the candidates will have to focus more on reaching voters as they approach early voting. We should then see more billboards, signs, and commercials as we head to an exciting mayoral election this May.
1I am excluding Finney’s left over campaign funds from his State Senate campaign account ($58,716) because that was raised prior to this quarter.