Big winners in U.S. House races raised big bucks

Jim Matheson, Jason Chaffetz and Rob Bishop not only won their U.S. House races this year, they raised so much money in the process that they have huge financial head starts for their next races.

While Matheson, D-Utah, spent $1.4 million on his race this year, he finished with an extra, massive $727,000 in the bank, according to the post-election disclosure forms he filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday.

Rep.-elect Chaffetz spent $378,500 en route to ousting Rep. Chris Cannon in the Republican primary and Democrat Bennion Spencer in the general election, but finished with no debt and a healthy $54,000 in the bank.

Aides to Bishop said he was not expected to file his disclosure form until after press deadlines Thursday night. But his filings before the election showed that he then had cash on hand amounting to $167,464 but had unpaid bills of about $50,000. With that, he should also have a healthy financial head start on future opponents.

Matheson — who raised and spent more than all other congressional candidates in Utah combined this year — said, "It clearly helps to start with money already in the bank."

In fact, he had more money left over ($726,910) than his GOP challenger Bill Dew spent in his entire campaign ($610,695) — and Dew was able to spend that much only because he personally loaned his campaign $570,000.

Having such a big head start could scare off many challengers unless they are millionaires like Dew who can largely self-fund their races.

But Matheson said, "That doesn't mean I will let up on fundraising." He said he will begin raising funds for the next race almost immediately.

Similarly, Chaffetz also said he will not stand pat with the $54,288 he has in the bank. "We'll get after it (fundraising) in January. We're only 15 months away from the next caucus meetings, so you have to run perpetually, unfortunately. It's not my first choice, but it is reality," he said.

Chaffetz did show that massive amounts of money are not necessarily required to beat an incumbent. He had spent only about $100,000 through the primary and beat Cannon, who had spent $667,000 through that time.

For the entire campaign, Chaffetz spent $378,423 and raised $442,241 (without needing to put in any of his own money).

"My wife and I were committed to remain debt free, and we did. We still spent only about half (in the entire campaign) than what Mr. Cannon did (in just the primary)," Chaffetz said. "I said at the very beginning that my No. 1 issue was fiscal discipline," and he said his spending proves he is fiscally conservative.

Spencer, Chaffetz's Democratic opponent, reported raising $42,866 and spending $40,787. So Chaffetz outspent him by a 9-1 margin.

The final disclosure forms also reinforce the traditional view that special-interest groups donate almost all of their money to whomever is favored in a race.

For example, Matheson raised about $1.38 million from special-interest political action committees (PACs) in the two-year election cycle. Dew raised only $10,250 from them, meaning Matheson raised 134 times more.

Before Chaffetz beat Cannon in the primary, he had received only $16,500 from PACs (while Cannon had raised $570,000 from them). After Chaffetz upset Cannon and became the favorite, he raised nearly $150,000 from PACs while Spencer raised only $3,100 from them.

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E-mail: lee@desnews.com

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