LG May 06 Money Preview

According to this post over at BMG, Deb Goldberg has given $1 Million to her campaign.

I'll analyze this more later after the others' results are in, but my initial reaction is this:

This will help her for sure, but will also help Silbert and Murray raise a lot more money this summer because they will be able to argue that Goldberg's wealth hurts the ticket. If I were working for those two campaigns, I'd immediately begin calling Goldberg's supporters and asking them for money since they can't give her any more and since, as da clerk points out over in the BMG post, she didn't really need their money in the first place.

I also would caution Silbert and Murray against running a "woe is I" campaign. That makes you look poor. In the 2002 LG race, I recall Pines and Slattery saying at bit of the "the voters can't be bought" to try to get traction against Gabrieli's millions. The difference there was that they didn't have NEARLY the funds that Silbert and Murray have now. According to OCPF, Silbert and Murray will go into the Convention each having hundreds of thousands more than any downballot candidate in history. (Click here to see 2002 Cahill, Segel #s as opf 5/31/02.) That's an amazing feat, particularly for Silbert (who could be pushing 500K COH) as a first-time candidate with no personal wealth.

I also think that this is probably only the first of a couple more Deb's willing to put in. (If you have 1 million, surely you have a couple more you can afford, right?). If she puts up a $2 million ad campaign against an 800K effort from Silbert and Murray, I don't know who wins, especially given that there's going to be a ton of Gov. ads on the air.

All very interesting.