Pundits' Guide

[Welcome, National Newswatch readers!]

As a follow to our last post on the latest filings from the 2006 Liberal leadership contestants with outstanding debts to pay off, I've compiled the fundraising totals reported in each of the contestant's interim and/or final/amended returns at the Elections Canada website.

UPDATE: More from Glen McGregor here, where he puts all the fundraising data into his Tableau software and analyzes it by size, date and location.

And one of the minor candidates is standing out from all the others.

First up is the monetary fundraising by the four major candidates (i.e., those who finished up in the top 4 spots, and whose initial placement and subsequent movements determined the final outcome, and all of whom raised at least one million dollars).

[Note: on the Finances page of this website I show the monetary + non-monetary contributions to political parties. In this instance I'm showing the monetary only, as the non-monetary ("in-kind") contributions were mostly insignificant and an extra step in the calculations. Eventually, I'll report everything properly.]

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Of these four candidates, Messrs. Rae and Ignatieff have long ago filed final returns, with Mr. Ignatieff raising around $204K in the last six months of 2008, and Mr. Rae filing his final return a month before this timeframe.

Mr. Dion is now within $30,000 of retiring his debts, having raised some $615K since June of 2008 (albeit most of it in the first 18 months of the timeframe). Gerard Kennedy has raised $193K since June, 2008, with $108K to go.

Next we look at the lower-tier candidates with outstanding obligations, and notice that Maurizio Bevilacqua's performance stands out from the crowd, over the three years since the end of the leadership contest period.

[Note that Carolyn Bennett also had a $0 balance when she completed her filings shortly after the contest concluded. She had raised a total of $170K during her campaign.]

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Here we see that Mr. Bevilacqua raised $269K from June 2008 to June 2011, while Martha Hall Findlay raised $87K, Ken Dryden raised $78K, Joe Volpe raised $62K, and Hedy Fry raised $23K. Scott Brison raised $52K – most of it in the first year – which was sufficient to retire his debts and file his final return.

So, Maurizio Bevilacqua raised as much as four of the other five minor candidates combined, most of it during the period between June, 2009 and December, 2010, and he is now $33K or so away from retiring his debts as well. The bulk of his fundraising would have come during the lead-up to last November's municipal election, when he successfully ran to become the Mayor of Vaughan, Ontario. He must have been highly focused on getting this issue put behind him before switching gears in his political career.

Bevilacqua was also the only candidate to borrow more than the value of his reported leadership campaign expenses, the difference in spending being mostly accounted for by interest costs and a charge for membership forms, neither of which are included as campaign expenses for the purpose of leadership contests, and the $50K refundable entrance fee paid to the Liberal Party, which is said to be before the courts.

Selected Metrics, 2006 Liberal Leadership Contest

Tags: Leadership Contests, Liberals, Party Finance