Candidates for the state legislature must file their pre-primary campaign finance reports today. I was able to find Eileen Donoghue’s but not Chris Doherty’s (as of 9:45 pm). Candidates may file electronically, so Doherty does have a few more hours. These reports cover all activity from January 1 thru August 27. If you want to see any of these reports, just visit this section of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance website and select the candidate of interest to you from the field labeled “filers”. Here’s a breakdown of Donoghue’s report:

Contributions: Donoghue began with $2047 left over from her City Council campaigns. To that, she has added $98,217 none of which was from her. Of that total of $100,264, she had spent $73,189 leaving her a balance of $27,075. (Remember, this doesn’t include money raised or spent since August 27). State law requires the listing of any donor that gave more than $50. Donoghue reported $5991 from those giving less than $50. Of those giving more than $50, Donoghue had 430 donors who gave her an average amount of $214. Of the 430 donors, 229 (53%) lived within the state senate district. Seventy-eight of her donors gave the maximum amount of $500 (63 gave $250, 65 gave $200 and 200 gave $100 each).

Expenditures: Donoghue’s biggest expense was payments to campaign staff which totaled $26,206. She also paid $9,750 for consulting. Printing, mailing and postage accounted for $22,207. Payments for newspaper ads totaled just $650. The remainder of Donoghue’s payments were for typical items such as t-shirts, cell phones, office rental and supplies – nothing extraordinary.

Two things that strike me are the relatively large amount paid to campaign staff. If those folks have been hard at work doing voter ID in preparation for an aggressive Get Out The Vote operation on election day, it could be money well spent. The other item is the paucity of spending on newspaper advertising. Presumably this will go up as election day gets closer, but that’s still an almost invisible amount.

As soon as Chris Doherty’s report is filed, I’ll do a similar analysis.