Who’s raised the most money in the Clark County School Board race?
A former assemblywoman has raised almost twice as much campaign money as the second-highest fundraiser in the race for Clark County School Board.
Three seats are up for grabs in the Nov. 8 election for the board that oversees the fifth-largest school district in the country. Incumbents Irene Cepeda, Danielle Ford and Linda Cavazos will face off against challengers Brenda Zamora, Irene Bustamante Adams and Greg Wieman, respectively.
Bustamante Adams, a former assemblywoman, has more than $53,000 in her campaign war chest, according to the latest campaign finance reports, which were filed last week. Bustamante Adams served in the Nevada Assembly from 2010 to 2018 and is now the deputy director of a Southern Nevada workforce development board.
Bustamante Adams’ pot of money accounts for nearly 40 percent of the total funding that the six candidates have raised through October.
Her haul amounts to nearly twice as much as incumbent Trustee Linda Cavazos, who trails Bustamante Adams with about $29,000 raised. Cavazos is running for her second term on the board and has lived in her district for more than 30 years.
Here’s how much each candidate has raised according to third-quarter campaign finance reports:
— Irene Bustamante Adams: $53,736.33
— Linda Cavazos: $29,150.54
— Irene Cepeda: $13,400
— Greg Wieman: $13,300
— Brenda Zamora: $12,926.82
— Danielle Ford: $12,321
Most of the campaigns had spent between $4,000 and $9,000 through the middle of October, according to the campaign finance filings, but Bustamante Adams was again the outlier, spending more than twice as much as the next highest spender.
Through the middle of October, these are the amounts each campaign had spent:
— Bustamante Adams: $23,867.80
— Wieman: $8,923.22
— Zamora: $8,248.02
— Ford: $7,206.33
— Cepeda: $5,330.15
— Cavazos: $4,864.35
In Nevada, individuals can contribute up to $10,000 to a candidate’s campaign. Candidates must disclose the names of donors who give more than $100 to their campaign.
Some of the top donors to the School Board candidates include:
— The Clark County Education Association, the teachers union, which donated the maximum amount of $10,000 to Bustamante Adams, Cepeda and Wieman, the candidates it endorsed in this year’s School Board race.
— Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom, who donated $9,710.02 to Cavazos through personal donations and his campaign.
— The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which recently endorsed an initiative to break up the school district. It donated $2,500 to Bustamante Adams, Cepeda and Wieman.
— Be the Change PAC, a political action committee that works to engage young people, people of color and LGBTQ communities. It donated $6,000 to incumbent Danielle Ford, $2,500 to newcomer and progressive advocate Brenda Zamora, and $250 to Cavazos.
— Golden Gaming, which operates The Strat and the PT’s Pub chain. It donated $2,500 to Bustamante Adams.
Wieman said his larger donors like the teachers union and the chamber all share the same goal of improving public education in the Clark County School District.
“I haven’t promised anybody anything,” he said. “They think that I may add some ability and professionalism to the board.”
With the exception of two large donations from Segerblom, Cavazos said her donations have mostly been from individuals and local unions and not huge corporations, something she attributed to her grassroots approach to campaigning.
In contrast to her first campaign for school board in 2018, Cavazos said she made a decision this time to forgo campaign signs, deciding her money would be better spent on tactics like calling and texting voters directly.
“I do not believe in saturating people’s mailboxes with mailers. I think after a time they tune out,” she said. “I don’t think signs vote. People vote.”
To view a candidate’s campaign finance reports, voters may visit the Nevada secretary of state’s website.
Contact Lorraine Longhi at 702-387-5298 or llonghi @reviewjournal.com. Follow her at @lolonghi on Twitter.