2014 Pre-Primary Finance: Donor Analysis
A dataset analysis of pre-primary contributions to 11 different local campaigns for Ann Arbor elected office confirms some clear patterns among the donors. The primary election will be held Aug. 5, 2014.
Excerpt from summary report of a dataset of campaign contributions made to Ann Arbor local campaigns during the pre-primary reporting period for the Aug. 5, 2014 primary election.
The dataset was compiled by The Chronicle after the Friday, July 25 deadline for filing campaign finance reports. It includes contributions to the 2014 mayoral Democratic primary campaigns for the four candidates – Sabra Briere, Sally Petersen, Christopher Taylor and Stephen Kunselman – as well as contributions to Democratic city council primary campaigns of seven candidates in three wards: Don Adams and Sumi Kailasapathy in Ward 1; Nancy Kaplan and Kirk Westphal in Ward 2; and Julie Grand, Bob Dascola and Samuel McMullen in Ward 3.
Contributors to those 11 campaigns appear to perceive city council candidates Don Adams, Kirk Westphal and Julie Grand as aligned with mayoral candidate Christopher Taylor – as well as with each other. And judged by their donations, contributors appear to perceive city council candidates Sumi Kailasapathy, Nancy Kaplan and Bob Dascola as politically similar to each other – and to some extent politically similar to mayoral candidates Sabra Briere and Stephen Kunselman.
Those conclusions are based on the 1,278 individual contributions totaled across all the campaigns (517 for city council races and 761 for the mayoral race). The Chronicle counted at least 312 contributions that were made by people who gave to more than one of the campaigns. Those 312 contributions came from 99 different people. Not typical of the contributions were those of 22nd circuit court candidate Veronique Liem, who gave money to seven of the 11 campaigns, including all four mayoral candidates.
The Chronicle also tagged donors in the dataset as current or past members of public bodies – like the city council, the city planning commission and the Ann Arbor District Library board. That exercise revealed that every current member of the library board made at least one contribution to mayoral or council campaigns. Taylor received contributions from five of seven library board members and Briere from one. Westphal received contributions from three library board members.
Stephen Kunselman has campaigned in part based on his endorsements from four current city councilmembers – all of whom contributed money to his campaign. Ward 2 council candidate Nancy Kaplan received contributions from the same four, plus a former councilmember.
When former councilmembers are included in the count, Taylor received contributions from a total of seven. Briere received contributions from four former councilmembers. Among council candidates, Westphal received the most contributions from current and former councilmembers – a total of seven.
The Chronicle initially compiled the set of data – for three city council races and the mayor’s race – in order to generate analyses of geographic trends and distribution of amounts that have been contributed to each campaign. Those analyses are presented in previous coverage: “Council Election Finance 2014: Charts, Maps” and “Mayoral Election Finance 2014: Charts, Maps.”
The dataset should be viewed with the caveat that data entry was done manually from scanned documents generated by the campaigns, so they include a range of spelling variants and other minor inconsistencies. In addition, The Chronicle’s institutional knowledge about donors’ background, even when combined with online research, is imperfect. Some donors in various categories might have been missed.
Below we present some of the patterns of contributions made by donors to the campaigns.
Which Campaigns Shared Donors?
The clearest grouping of mayoral and city council candidates evident from the campaign finance data is the same as the group endorsed by Michigan Talent Agenda, which sent out a mailing funded by Ned Staebler’s Inspire Michigan political action committee: Christopher Taylor, Don Adams, Kirk Westphal and Julie Grand in the mayor’s race and Wards 1 through 3, respectively.
That grouping can be seen in the contributions of individual donors like Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA) board member Roger Hewitt, DDA board member and former city councilmember Joan Lowenstein, former DDA board member and former Washtenaw County commissioner Leah Gunn, and DDA outside legal counsel Jerry Lax – who all gave money to that set of four candidates. Lax also provides outside legal counsel to the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority and the Local Development Finance Authority. Gunn is also treasurer for Taylor’s campaign, as she’s been for other councilmembers in the past – including outgoing councilmember Margie Teall and former councilmember Marcia Higgins, both representing Ward 4.
The overall numbers bear out the Taylor-Adams-Westphal-Grand grouping. Ward 1 candidate Don Adams reported 31 contributions. Of 11 multiple-candidate donors who gave to Adams’ Ward 1 campaign, 10 of them also gave to Westphal’s Ward 2 campaign and 8 of them also gave to Taylor’s mayoral campaign.
Ward 2 candidate Kirk Westphal reported 95 contributions. Of 35 multiple-candidate donors who gave to Westphal’s Ward 2 campaign, 29 of them also gave to Taylor’s campaign and 12 of them also gave to Grand’s Ward 3 campaign.
Ward 3 candidate Julie Grand reported 45 contributions. Of 16 multiple-candidate donors who gave to Grand’s Ward 3 campaign, 15 also gave to Taylor’s mayoral campaign and 12 also gave to Westphal’s campaign.
Opponents of the Taylor-Adams-Westphal-Grand grouping form a discernible group of their own, even if it’s somewhat less clear, particularly in the mayoral slot. Based on contributions to council campaigns, supporters of the Kailasapathy-Kaplan-Dascola group show an intersection of support for Kunselman and Briere as mayor.
The numerical breakdown is as follows. Ward 1 incumbent Sumi Kailasapathy reported 51 contributions. Of 35 multiple-candidate donors who gave to Kailasapathy’s Ward 1 campaign, 27 also gave to Kaplan’s Ward 2 campaign, 18 gave to Dascola’s Ward 3 campaign, 13 gave to Briere’s mayoral campaign and 13 gave to Kunselman’s campaign.
Ward 2 candidate Nancy Kaplan reported 132 contributions. Of 42 multiple-candidate donors who gave to Kaplan’s Ward 2 campaign, 27 also gave to Kailasapathy’s campaign, 18 gave to Kunselman’s mayoral campaign and 14 gave to Briere’s mayoral campaign.
Ward 3 candidate Bob Dascola reported 75 contributions. Of 28 multiple-candidate donors who gave to Dascola’s Ward 3 campaign, 22 also gave to Kaplan’s campaign; and 18 also gave to Sumi Kailasapathy’s Ward 1 campaign. The Chronicle counted only two multiple-candidate donors among McMullen’s Ward 3 campaign contributions.
Even if the council campaign contributions indicated indirectly that there could be an intersection of support for Kunselman and Briere, the mayoral contributions don’t provide much direct support for that in the form of shared donors by the two.
Mayoral candidate Stephen Kunselman reported 59 contributions. Of the 23 multiple-candidate donors who gave to Kunselman’s mayoral campaign, just 4 gave to Briere’s mayoral campaign.
Christopher Taylor and Sabra Briere reported 365 and 204 contributions for their respective mayoral campaigns. Of the 42 multiple-candidate donors to Taylor’s mayoral campaign and the 30 multiple donors to Briere’s campaign, they shared 9 donors in common. Those common donors included executive director of the Main Street Area Association Maura Thompson, park advisory commissioner David Santacroce, local developer Peter Allen, and planning commissioner Ken Clein.
Mayoral candidate Sally Petersen reported 133 contributions. Of 8 multiple-candidate donors who gave to Petersen’s mayoral campaign, 4 also gave to Kaplan’s Ward 2 campaign, and 4 also gave to Taylor’s mayoral campaign.
Embedded below is a shared Google spreadsheet with a comprehensive breakdown of multiple-candidate donors, including the amounts donated to each candidate.
Public Officials Past and Present
In the dataset of multiple-candidate donors, many of the names are recognizable as present or past public officials. The embedded spreadsheet above includes tabs with breakdowns of contributions by several different public bodies, including the Ann Arbor District Library board and the city council. For readers who’d like to review the data on their own, here’s a link to the full-sized spreadsheet.
Ann Arbor District Library Board
All of the Ann Arbor District Library board’s seven members made contributions to at least one of the city campaigns. That includes AADL board member Nancy Kaplan, who gave money to Sumi Kailasapathy’s Ward 1 city council campaign in addition to Kaplan’s own Ward 2 campaign.
Mayoral candidate Christopher Taylor received contributions from five of the seven board members: Ed Surovell, Jan Barney Newman, Margaret Leary, Prudence Rosenthal and Rebecca Head. Briere received a contribution from Barbara Murphy. Among council candidates, Westphal received contributions to his Ward 2 campaign from three AADL board members: Jan Barney Newman, Margaret Leary, Rebecca Head.
Bob Dascola received contributions from Kaplan and from former AADL board member David Cahill, who is Briere’s spouse and campaign treasurer.
Ann Arbor City Council
Stephen Kunselman has campaigned in part based on his endorsements from four of the seven current city councilmembers who are not running for mayor: Sumi Kailasapathy, Jane Lumm, Jack Eaton and Mike Anglin. All four also contributed money to his campaign: a total of $675. Ward 2 council candidate Nancy Kaplan received contributions from the same four, as well as from Leslie Morris, who served on the council in the late 1970s and early 1980s – for a total of $925.
When former councilmembers are included in the count, mayoral candidate Christopher Taylor received contributions from a total of seven: Carsten Hohnke, Jean Carlberg, Joan Lowenstein, Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall, Stephen Rapundalo and Tony Derezinski. Their contributions totaled $1,300.
Briere received contributions from four former councilmembers: David DeVarti, Leslie Morris, Robert Faber, and Susan Greenberg. Their contributions totaled $725.
Among council candidates, Westphal received the most contributions from current and former councilmembers – a total of seven: Christopher Taylor, Jean Carlberg, Joan Lowenstein, John Hieftje, Leigh Greden, Stephen Rapundalo and Tony Derezinski. Those contributions came to $1,050.
For his Ward 1 campaign, Adams received contributions from mayor John Hieftje and Christopher Taylor, as well as former city councilmember Joan Lowenstein.
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“Contributors to those 11 campaigns appear to perceive city council candidates Don Adams, Kirk Westphal and Julie Grand as aligned with mayoral candidate Christopher Taylor – as well as with each other.”
That’s a bit of a stretch, and an unnecessary one that only feeds perceptions of “alignments”. Your otherwise objective analysis wouldn’t have suffered at all by omitting it.
(I don’t remember this level of analysis back in the 2010 general election. It would have been a much shorter piece.)
This brilliant analysis confirms my own view that once again we have the Council Party versus the Neighborhoodies.
There is an objective way to do this – via a cluster analysis and/or factor analysis. That procedure shows which donation patterns clump together – not sure if it should be done by donor or candidate.
Anyway, there is a clear pattern in the data. It can be stated more neutrally, but the pattern is there.
On occasion big donors give a set amount to each candidate just to make sure that they back the winner. That’s not what is going on here.
This same sort of analysis can be done with the candidates votes on issues. This is something that is done regularly with the Supreme Court judges. What is the correlation of Robert’s vote with Thomas? Who does Thomas agree with the most, the least, etc. And, if you code the decisions on First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, etc. the relationship across judges might vary a bit more
Donor Eunice Burns is also a former member of City Council.
Very interesting discussion of the source of candidate funding. Thanks.
I would point out that this analysis is based on the pre-election campaign finance reports. It is not too late to contribute to the candidate of your choice. Not every candidate was able to raise $75,000. A contribution at this point in a campaign is welcome because a lot of spending happens in the last couple of weeks of a before the election.
Lastly, remember to vote on or before August 5! You can apply for an absentee ballot in person at the City Clerk’s office, fill in the ballot and return it in person or by mail (if you qualify by age or because you will be out of town on election day).
Incredible analysis. Thanks for doing all this work.
Looking forward to seeing a map of all of this.
I don’t think a map of this would be as informative as a data visualization, which shows these clusters. I really don’t expect that these distinctive clusters live in distinctive neighborhoods.
Is Adams contradicting himself here on same-sex issues?
Adams says this about marriage equality: [link]
“Adams was unequivocal about gay marriage: “I don’t support it,”
But listen to what he says here: [link]
As he seems to support equal rights?
Here’s another contradiction, this one by CM Taylor as he said one thing to one crowd and another thing to another crowd.
At a debate he wanted an articulation of numbers by SPARK.
“There is no question that the numbers that we receive from any of the entities with which we contract, ought to be held to a rigorous standard. I understand that some folks think that the numbers we’ve received are inaccurate. I would suspect that the folks who created the numbers have a counter argument. I would prefer myself be eager to hear a full articulation of both.”
That was a good response, but perhaps it was just sucking up to the crowd, because SPARK has not done a job audit, so that articulation has not been done. Recently, SPARK’s auditors admitted to a mistake, and SPARK has upped its job projection to 17,000 jobs while info-tech jobs have dropped -20% during the same time period. And keep in mind that the non-profit is running a for-profit fund, and how they weren’t releasing the financial statements to the public… after all that… Taylor now says…
“I support SPARK”
It’s sad to see elected officials supporting something with so many red flags and refusing to acknowledge those red flags. Do elected officials just look past bad behavior? If they support it, then do they encourage and approve it?
I like the way Drdata thinks. I don’t think a factor analysis would be very easy to do (no correlation matrix) but a cluster analysis would be an awesome exercise in sheer nerd-dom. Set up a matrix with all candidates on both axes, and put the number of shared endorsements in the cells, then cluster. Then try to figure out which contributors are the most characteristic of each cluster maybe, and you’d have some sense of who are the bellwethers in local politics (though I think that wouldn’t be a surprise).
Re: [9] I contacted Don Adams to ask for some context.
He sent us this followup to earlier answers he’d given to Pat Lesko. [We don't yet have a copy of his initial responses.]
@11: Gee, I don’t know, Rod. Putting candidates on an ax seems pretty dangerous, let alone on two. They’ve already disclosed their contributors, what else are you looking to get out of them?
I interviewed Don Adams for about 40 minutes on a wide variety of subjects. The interview was recorded while I took notes:
1. what distinguished him from the incumbent
2. transit
3. infrastructure
4. Ward 1 blight
5. his views on development in Ward 1
6. his views on a woman’s right to choose
7. his views on marriage equality
I asked the latter two questions because of, in part, the Dem forum and the fact that the marriage equality question came up and Adams did not answer it.
Don said he does not support a woman’s right to choose and does not support marriage equality (gay marriage). When I asked him if he is a Democrat, he said yes.
I then asked Adams about his endorsers, because none were listed on his site. He ticked off an impressive list: Hieftje (who’s going door-to-door with Adams), Taylor, Sandi Smith, Conan Smith, MTA and Rebekah Warren. When I asked whether he might be exaggerating since nothing was posted to his site, he offered to take my phone number and have Chris phone me directly.
The next day I began calling people to make sure they’d endorsed him: Sandi, Conan and Ned (Staebler) all said yes. Sandi was blind-sided and said she would have remained neutral, had she known Adams was pro-life and does not support marriage equality. Conan was gob smacked that Don had said he was pro-life and anti-marriage equality and said he was going to call him.
It was that evening, after I spoke with Conan, that Don sent me (and David Askins, evidently) the email “expanding” on his yes/no answers, in essence trying to reverse himself.
Rebekah Warren did not respond to phone messages on her cell, or her own staff’s emails asking whether she did endorse Adams, as he told me. He was very clear that he spoke to Conan and Rebekah at the same time—first Conan, then the two of them together.
I really couldn’t care whether he’s pro-life and anti-marriage equality for religious reasons. He’s entitled to his religious beliefs. The public, however, is entitled to know about candidates whom they elect.
Taylor, who Adams claimed would be happy to call me and discuss his support of the Ward 1 candidate, said through his campaign manager on Monday is not endorsing any other candidates.
Sumi Kailasapathy is pro-choice and supports gay marriage, she said. It’s a difference between the candidates that will matter to some and not a bit to others.
Re (12) Why would he need to “expand on my answers to your questions earlier”, if he answered the yes or no questions with either a yes or no answer?
If he answered yes when asked do you support marriage equality, what clarification is needed? If he answered no, then this “clarification” is actually a change of position. If his support for marriage equality is indeed unequivocal, then it is hard to understand how the original answer needed further comment.
Voters who support marriage equality (as well as other LGBT issues) and a woman’s right to chose should be troubled by this candidates need to “clarify” his previously stated position on these issues.
My guess is that anyone who is anti-choice and anti-marriage-equality is going to be crushed in a First Ward Democratic primary.
Looks like Cahill and Eaton have decided to double-down on the dirty campaigning. Too bad there’s apparently no candidate you can support in a positive manner.
“Looks like Cahill and Eaton have decided to double-down on the dirty campaigning. Too bad there’s apparently no candidate you can support in a positive manner.”
No, no no. The question is why would a busload of ‘democrats’ be supporting a candidate who is anti-choice and anti-gay marriage? It appears, as always, for some of these ‘democrats’ they were uninformed and didn’t do their homework or that money talks and they’ll support anyone with a pulse if they are on the side of the Council Party, the DDA and the usual suspects. What a shock.
According to the Chronicle’s analysis, Taylor contributed $100.00 to Adams and $100.00 to Westphal.
A contribution is an endorsement.
So what are we to make of the statement by Taylor’s campaign manager that Taylor is not endorsing any other candidates? Has Taylor thrown Adams under the bus?
I noticed that in the dataset we flagged Ingrid Sheldon as a former mayor, but failed to include “CC” in that field, which left her out of the summary of past/present councilmembers. So I’ve added her in manually.