On Jan. 10, Shelton Mayor and gubernatorial hopeful Mark Lauretti made his first campaign finance disclosures.
They weren’t exactly eye-popping.
Days into his candidacy, Lauretti had raised just $1,200. A quarter of that money came in donations from his wife and two sons.
How three months can change things.
Lauretti’s campaign filed its latest fundraising numbers Friday, showing the mayor raised $109,325 from nearly 1,500 donors in the first quarter of 2014.
The campaign had $57,358.91 on hand as of March 31.
Seymour First Selectman Kurt Miller, a friend of Lauretti’s and and advisor to his campaign, said Monday the numbers show that Lauretti “is an extremely viable candidate for governor.”
Noting that Lauretti trails the GOP campaign’s front-runnners only slightly, Miller said the first quarter numbers are “a very good barometer of (Lauretti’s) support.”
And that momentum has only been accelerating, he said.
“What we’re starting to see is it’s ramping up faster and faster,” Miller said. “We’ve actually been getting a lot of calls in the last couple of weeks from people who want to do fundraisers for him.”
The Field
Lauretti’s first quarter totals were beaten by only one other candidate in the Republican field for governor, Tom Foley, who won the party’s nomination for governor in 2010 but lost to Gov. Dannel Malloy.
Here are the totals from the other candidates’ disclosure filings:
1. In the first quarter Foley raised $109,604, and finished with $55,895.87 on hand as of March 31.
2. Lauretti raised $109,325 and finished with $57,358.91 on hand.
3. Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton raised $93,171, and finished with $57,970.78 on hand.
4. State legislator John McKinney raised $44,394.11, and finished with $69,940.20 on hand.
5. Joseph Visconti raised $8,740 and had $4,113.46 on hand.
6. Martha Dean raised $7,985 and finished with $7,412.21 on hand.
Lauretti’s filing is posted below in its entirety.
‘Almost Halfway Home’ After Three Months
The totals exceeded the campaign’s predictions, the mayor said Monday.
“I think the expectation of getting to $100,000 (in three months) was pretty ambitious,” Lauretti said. “Not a lot of people are doing that.”
Lauretti is now just short of halfway toward his goal of raising $250,000 — with no more than $100 from any individual — the total needed to qualify for the state’s public campaign financing grants.
The mayor on Monday contrasted his fundraising numbers with some of his opponents’, saying the data shows he’s a candidate with broad-based appeal.
“Fundraising demonstrates your viability,” he said. “If you can’t do that, forget it. I’m three months into this thing and I’m almost halfway home. It took the governor 18 months to qualify. John McKinney’s been at it for a year. Boughton’s been at it for five years.”
Room For Growth?
Lauretti also pointed to a March poll by Quinnipiac University as evidence of his appeal.
The poll put Lauretti in third in the GOP race, with 6 percent of registered Republicans supporting him.
That number is a long way from the 36 percent garnered by the Republicans’ 2010 nominee for governor, former ambassador Tom Foley, but Lauretti’s supporters point out the poll was taken when the Shelton mayor’s candidacy was in its infancy. Foley and Boughton, Lauretti’s people said, have been campaigning for years.
Boughton, Foley’s running mate in 2010, was also ahead of Lauretti in the poll, with 11 percent support.
Lauretti said Monday that Foley is still the front-runner, “because he was the candidate last time.”
But he said the poll numbers show his campaign has room for growth, while others have struggled for traction.
“They can’t be happy with (the poll numbers),” Lauretti said of his opponents. “Boughton’s been running for five years. Foley’s been running for five years. I had been running for two months. I thought that was pretty good.”
He also called fundraising totals announced by Boughton’s campaign on Thursday (April 10) “not too accurate,” saying the Danbury mayor inflated his numbers by combining fundraising efforts with a lieutenant governor candidate.
Lauretti said his momentum will only continue because he’s the candidate with the most executive experience, having been mayor of Shelton since 1991.
“There’s a lot for me to talk about,” Lauretti said. “The other guys can’t talk about the things I can talk about. And if you look at the number of contributions I have, it’s spread across the state.”
Platform Announcement
Lauretti planned to lay out his platform at a campaign rally in Bridgeport Monday evening.
The mayor said Monday afternoon he’d be drawing attention to what he called “a non-stop tax agenda” from Malloy.
“It almost seems like (raising taxes) is a priority for him,” Lauretti said.
But to get into an election face-off with Malloy he’ll have to defeat his fellow Republicans first.
In recent weeks the issue of last year’s new gun control law has featured prominently in the Republican race, but Lauretti said he doesn’t think gun control will be a front-burner topic in the election.
“That’s just one issue,” he said.
People are demanding a better economy and they’re looking to Hartford to make it happen.
The mayor said he plans to stick to running on his record as a competent executive who has kept taxes at bay for more than two decades.
“That’s the whole ball of wax,” Lauretti said. “Twenty-three years (after his first term began) we continue to prosper, we continue to grow. Who else can talk about those things?”
