This quarter’s campaign finance reports are trickling in (July 10 is the deadline for filing) and we’re going through them as quickly as they come. Incumbent Faye Culp, a Republican Florida House member from South Tampa, loaned her campaign $50,000 on the last day of the quarter. She had raised just $12,000, a pittance for a sitting member of the House who can hit up any number of special interests for some cash. (She got her $12,000 in contributions from, among others, the tobacco industry, the hospital industry, builders, bankers and phosphate producers.)
The loan comes less than a month after Democrat Deborah Cope, who lost to Culp two years ago, announced she was switching out of a Hillsborough County Commission race and into a rematch with Culp. It is also far larger than any amount she has loaned herself in the past; a $3,000 loan in 1995 was the biggest I found on the Florida Division of Elections finance database.
Two things to consider when judging this as a sign of possible weakness: the Republican Party of Florida will make available to Culp whatever she needs to run her race, and Culp hasn’t spend one thin dime yet. Money likely won’t be an issue for her, but Cope clearly caught her nemesis flat-footed as they head into the November general election.
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2006.
