18th District wrap up.

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Well, here's the numbers based on C-3's filed by the candidates.

Brandon Vick..................$200 to $7300 ($4,415 actual donations)

Jon Russell .....................$195 ($175 in personal funds) to $11,500 or so

Anthony Bittner..............0 the same at $4571

Ann Rivers......................$3550 to $43,679 ($35,470 actual donations)

Dennis Kampe.................$1335 (Plus $1000 in personal funds) to $16,960 ($14,160 actual donations)

Anyone else running has either dropped out or filed short form, limiting their financial involvement to $5000 or less.

So, what's it all mean?

It means Bittner, Russell and Vick have no serious support.

It means that the democrats have written the 18th off and made Kampe their token candidate, when he has to write himself thousand dollar checks.... that aren't even loans.

I've been doing this long enough to know that money is certainly not the only indicator of support. I've been to a couple of parades, for example.

I look at Ann Rivers' US Senatorial size parade posse, in comparison to lesser candidates like Jaime Herrera or any of the others running.... and I've got to wonder: who really has the support?

When Russell finally accepted the inevitable, that is that as a congressional candidate, he had little chance to rise above punchline status and ditched that to run for the 18th, I figured he was a kamikaze candidate.

Russell knows he can't win. While he claimed he had an "Army of 200 volunteers" when he bailed out of his flaming congressional run, there's no evidence that he has anything of the sort.

Two hundred volunteers could hold car washes and raise more money than Russell has. And an abysmal showing in this election will fortunately mean he's through.

Recent events verifying his propensity to lie will follow him for the rest of his hopefully short political career.

Bittner has almost completely disappeared, sullying what otherwise could have been a promising political career by engaging in rather rank cowardice.

While a painful conclusion to draw, the fact is that Bittner has yet to attend a single, solitary forum of any kind. He's blown off the 18th District PCO's, the Columbian Editorial Board (An act that for incumbents I recommend, but for new candidates represents something of a vital learning experience and name recognition opportunity) a couple of forums and has, so far, blown off CVTV as well.

From all appearances, this has long since ceased to be a political campaign as much as it's become an ego boost to a kid who seems to be incapable of taking representation of the people seriously.

Brandon Vick is a young man with a possible future in this business at some point... but now ain't that point.

He has shown himself incapable of raising anything approaching the necessary money to get his message out. And, unfortunately, it seems he's saddled himself with many of Shannon Barnett's campaign herd... and, well, they weren't all that... and as a result... well, we see the result.

Except for some minor exaggeration on his web site (No Brandon, in fact you're NOT "the only candidate that has the strength, vision and energy needed to win these battles.") he has not engaged in the falsehoods of a Russell as a campaign strategy.

At some point, with more experience and a better plan, he could become a force to be reckoned with.

This, however, is not that point.

There are 4 candidates fighting over what amounts as the same universe of disaffected and fringe elements. Haugen has gone completely off the reservation by espousing the idea that we should just eliminate the House of Representatives (ala the Nebraska plan) while Carson's issue, allegedly based on a failure of the mainstream parties to assist him in his now finished crusade to keep the BPA from running power lines down the street from my place, has vaporized as much as his ability to raise money.

Russell, who is now dealing with 6 different PDC violations (1 repeated) along with allegations that will dog him for the rest of the time he's in politics, (Concerning his almost pathologically false portrayal of his wife as a doctor) and as someone engaging in a whisper campaign because he's afraid to make allegations in public, attempts to take ownership of Tea Party affiliation. Vick, who at least showed up for several weeks at the We, The People vetting sessions (also, come to think of it, blown off by young Mr. Bittner) while Russell didn't seem to be all that frequent a guest; as something of a claim in.

Unfortunately, these people are pounding each other over the same group of voters, and are likely to cancel each other out. Kampe will get the votes of the few democrats who will actually vote in the primary before being destroyed in the general, but his percentage of the vote will likely put him in the top two positions come primary night.

Rivers has run a superior campaign in every respect and looks like she'll win all of it in the general, but will certainly be in the top two in the primary. Focusing on the issues an staying on target is it's own reward.
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