Election
BY BEN THOMPSON
Incumbent Austin officials hold financial leads before election
Austin mayoral candidates Campaign finances from July to late September 2024. Candidates are listed in ballot order.
Austin City Council candidates collectively raised more than $650,000 and had nearly $1 million avail- able for their campaigns in the lead-up to Election Day, paced once again by City Hall incumbents including Mayor Kirk Watson. The big picture Twenty-two candidates contending for the seats of mayor and council representatives for districts 2, 4, 6, 7 and 10 are on the ballot for Austin voters. Previous reports on their campaigns’ financial activity came out early this year and in July. New reports that were due one month before Election Day on Nov. 5 provide the latest look at finances since mid-summer. Final campaign reports will be released the week before the election. Zooming in Watson continued to heavily out-raise his competition in the mayoral contest and maintained a financial lead for his re-election bid. After raising over $700,000 in the first half of the year, Watson reported campaign contributions of about $216,500 from July through late September. It was more than three times the total of his challeng- ers—Carmen Llanes Pulido, Jeffery L. Bowen, Doug Greco and Kathie Tovo—combined. Watson also reported spending nearly half a mil- lion dollars in the same time period and had about $267,000 on hand, again outpacing competitors. Financial support for Watson is bolstered by the Austin Leadership PAC, which reported almost $236,000 on hand in late September. A pro-Greco PAC reported more than $19,000 remaining, while a pro-Llanes Pulido PAC had $9,210 in September.
Also of note Both Watson and Greco face ethics complaints over fundraising from donors outside city limits earlier this year. Final hearings on those charges will be held in late October, after press time. Greco argued Austin’s fundraising limits unfairly benefit incumbents, and he filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the rule. A judge dismissed the issue until the local ethics complaint is decided. Wat- son’s campaign says the complaint over his activity is flawed, and that it complied with city policy. The breakdown Incumbent Vanessa Fuentes remained ahead of Robert Reynolds in the South Austin District 2 coun- cil race. Reynolds reported spending $200 against Fuentes’s $41,000, and he had no remaining funds to her more than $93,000. Council member Chito Vela led financially in the race to represent North Central Austin’s District 4 with $67,000 on hand, to the more than $25,000 reported by his returning challenger Monica Guzmán. Candidate Louis Herrin reported less than $2,000, while candidates Eduardo “Lalito” Romero and Jim Rabuck didn’t file finance reports. In Northwest Austin, council member Mackenzie Kelly roughly doubled challenger Krista Laine’s donation, spending and cash-on-hand totals and had about $118,000 remaining. Kelly also filed an ethics complaint against Laine alleging she didn’t submit personal financial information to the city on time. In the six-person race to succeed Mayor Pro Tem Leslie Pool in District 7, two candidates took the lead in financial activity. Civil rights lawyer Gary Bledsoe overtook 2024’s first-half front-runner, attorney Mike Siegel, with more than $48,000 in cash on hand
Donations Spending
Cash on hand
Carmen Llanes Pulido
$33,672
$37,740.81
$4,661.29
Jeffery L. Bowen $11,355
$3,652.10 $9,915
Doug Greco
$10,080
$17,420.94
$45,218.50
Kirk Watson*
$216,483
$488,657.64
$266,891.61
Kathie Tovo
$19,516
$32,499.40 $31,713
SOURCE: CITY OF AUSTIN/COMMUNITY IMPACT *INCUMBENT
to Siegel’s $43,000. Candidate Todd Shaw was the only other to report more than $10,000 remaining. In the race for District 10, legislative director Ashika Ganguly pulled ahead of business owner and consultant Marc Duchen in both donations and remaining cash on hand; she had more than $98,000 left to his nearly $70,000. Duchen has also filed an ethics complaint over’s Ganguly’s financial state- ment filing.
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