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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

1st CD finance reports in: Labrador flush with cash, Farris not so much

1st Congressional District GOP Rep. Raul Labrador reports today that he's raised $177,609 in the latest campaign finance reporting period - a total of $797,686 for the election cycle to date; he's spent $87,073 ($510,197 to date), and had $290,984 in cash for his campaign at the close of the reporting period, which ran from July 1 to Sept. 30. His Democratic challenger, Jimmy Farris, reported raising $32,606 in the reporting period - $69,993 to date; spending $31,024 ($60,086 to date), and had just $9,888 on hand at the close of the reporting period.

You can read Farris' 54-page report here, and Labrador's 115-page report here, both at the Federal Election Commission website.

Just over half of Farris' fundraising for the period, $17,000, came from unions. The rest was from individuals, including online donations through the ActBlue Democratic fundraising site, or from Democratic Party committees.

Labrador raised $119,109 from individuals, including lots of business owners and top executives in Idaho, and $58,500 from PACs during the reporting period. His biggest single donation was $10,000 from The Freedom Project, House Speaker John Boehner's House GOP leadership PAC; he also received $2,000 from Friends of John Boehner. Other donations of note to Labrador were a total of $10,000, in four pieces, from two couples from Louisiana who own one of the largest vessel brokerage businesses in the Gulf of Mexico serving the oil and gas industry; $1,000 each from two out-of-state Indian tribes, in Minnesota and Washington; and $2,500 this period for a total of $7,500 to date from the beer wholesalers' PAC.

Labrador continued to pay his wife, Becca, a $2,063 per month salary for her work on the campaign.

Both Labrador and Farris used some of their campaign funds for expenditures identified as political donations. Farris gave $5,000 to the Idaho Democratic Party. Labrador gave $10,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee; $5,332 to the Idaho Republican Party; $500 to the Idaho Freedom Foundation; $310 to the Conservative Women of Idaho State PAC; and $1,000 each to the re-election campaigns of GOP Reps. Joe Walsh of Illinois and Jeffrey Landry of Louisiana.



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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