The latest campaign finance statements for Santa Rosa City Council candidates are in, but who's winning the money race depends on your definition.
If you're talking total cash raised including personal loans, Veronica Jacobi tops the field with just over $47,000 taken in to date, thanks largely to another big personal loan to herself.
Focus only on cash donations from others and Mayor Susan Gorin and Scott Bartley remain essentially tied. Bartley has raised nearly $40,000, just $700 ahead of Gorin.
Zero in on the donations from the latest reporting period, Oct. 1 to Oct. 16, and Larry Haenel surges to the head of the pack, pulling down more than $9,200 in just over two weeks.
All told, the six active candidates for City Council sucked up another $52,000 during the period, bringing the total amount raised to just over $185,000 for the race.
Incumbents dug deeper into their own pockets to retain their seats on the council, while no challengers loaned money to their campaigns during the period.
Jacobi spent another $12,000 of her own money on her campaign, pushing to $35,800 the amount of personal cash she's plowed into her reelection. This offset the fact that she received the smallest amount from outside donors of any candidate, just $1,640.
Gorin also dipped into personal savings to keep her campaign flush, loaning herself another $5,000, or $9,400 to date.
Such loans have helped the two incumbents spend money at a faster rate than their rivals. Jacobi has burned through nearly $39,000 while Gorin has laid out $31,000 so far this campaign.
Both also retained respectable war chests for the home stretch with Gorin enjoying nearly $10,000 in cash on hand and Jacobi sitting on $8,000.
Lagging behind was small businessman Hernandez, who has less than $400 in the bank after spending $4,000 more than the $7,000 he raised in donations for the period.
As is to be expected toward the end of the campaign, almost all candidates were spending money at a faster rate than it was coming in. They paid bills for campaign literature, postage and campaign consultants. And when they couldn't afford to, the liabilities piled up.
When personal campaign loans are set aside, Jake Ours has racked up the most debt to date, about $8,700 worth.
A good chunk of that was $5,700 in services he received from campaign consultant Herb Williams but has yet to pay. Williams said he commonly bills his candidates later in the campaign. He said Ours has some fund-raisers coming up and he expects to be paid next week.
"I'm not carrying him very far," Williams said.
The donors during the period were largely similar to groups that have backed the candidates in prior periods.
Hernandez reported the two $500 donations he received from police and fire unions but neglected to report previously.
The same builder and developer groups who have donated $10,000 each for attack ads against Gorin and Jacobi gave financial support to their rivals. Ours, Bartley and Hernandez all received $500 from both the Sonoma County Alliance PAC and a North Coast Builders Exchange PAC, which goes by the name North Coast Citizens for a Better Economy.
Keith Woods, executive director of the builder's exchange, boosted his group's cash with $250 donations of his own to those three same candidates.
Gorin reported receiving one surprising donation, $500 from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Gorin said she initially had no idea why a diminutive billionaire she's never met would want to help her campaign. But she said she later learned it was because he was funding mayors who were members of his gun control advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
"For the first time ever I said &‘I wish we had a higher contribution limit,'" she quipped.
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