Gavin Newsom Campaign for Governor Fundraising Woes 
Attorney General Jerry Brown announced Friday that he raised $3.4 million in 2008 in advance of an expected bid for governor in 2010. That sum leaves Brown, a Democrat, perched above his two declared Democratic rivals, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who each reported raising on the order of $1.1 million last year.Brown's haul, combined with leftover cash from his 2006 election, leaves him with $4.1 million cash-on-hand, a total that dwarfs the roughly $750,000 available to Garamendi and the $540,000 available to Newsom at year's end.
Yet that doesn't give an accurate picture.
But the bigger problem for Newsom is that he looks quite bad when compared to his own past fundraising.
When Newsom first ran for Mayor of San Francisco, he raised "$572,000 in his first two months of campaigning" according to the San Francisco Chronicle (I worked for his campaign).
While only raising twice as much in six months of campaigning for Governor as he raised in two months of running for mayor looks bad, the numbers look even worse under the surface. For Newsom's mayoral bid was constrained by $500 limits. Under such circumstances, Newsom would only have raised $370,682 for Governor. That is more than $200,000 less than he could do six years ago despite three times the time. And, back then he lacked the ability to raise money online, which makes the numbers look even worse.
There are a number of reason's why Newsom's fundraising breadth is experiencing shrinkage. For one thing, Democrats determined to win the general election are right to be worried about his negative poll numbers:
Newson is viewed favorably by 36%, unfavorably by 41%, and 23% are not sure what they think of him. Thirteen percent (13%) have a Very Favorable opinion of Newsom and 25% a Very Unfavorable view.
Yet two videos may tell the story better.
Gavin Newsom Galvanizes Support for Cal's Proposition 8 on Newsom's first statewide ad introduction to voters, which wasn't pretty and turned the tide for Proposition 8. [Embedding the video not allowed]
And then there is this Gavin Newsom video...
KEYWORDS: CA-Gov, California, Governor, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, John Garamendi, San Francisco, Proposition 8, Man Code
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