Current Market Price of a Georgia State Senate Seat

Time to get back to work.

The fat lady belted it out last Tuesday and the voice of 8% of the people was heard across the land in State Senate District 42 as handfuls of people straggled to the polls to vote. After months of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign expenses Jason Carter won the day and was elected to represent the 42nd from now until November of this year.

It's a tradition here at Bludgeon & Skewer to take a look at the campaign reports filed at the State Ethics Commission after any election we've been involved in and see what the Votes Per Dollar/Dollars Per Vote (VPD/DPV) ratio is for the Libertarian Candidates and his or her foes on the ballot. It's quite a bit of fun and very enlightening.

Jason Carter 15 Day Report:

$260,354 raised, $172,998 spent on 5,559 votes = $31 a vote

David Montané 15 Day Report:

$2,100 raised, $1,400 spent on 635 votes = $2 a vote

Tom Stubbs 15 day report:

$18,330 raised, $13,300 spent on 1,938 votes = $6 a vote

Steve Patrick 15 day report:

$450 raised, $3,204 spent on 327 votes = $9 a vote

So that's the rough picture, we'll repost on this topic sometime next week as soon as the final reports are filed by the candidates and we can get a look at what each campaign spent in the last two weeks of the race. We're pretty sure that Jason Carter broke the $300K fundraising threshold and we're also pretty sure they broke the $260K expense threshold in the waning days of the race. If so, their VPD/DPV ratio could have surpassed $46 bucks a vote. Kinda high for a limited term special election, but what with Tom Stubbs bowing out of the November election, you could cut it in half since young Senator Jason will run his next campaign as an unopposed incumbent. It's a fine Georgia tradition for both republicans and democrats.

And here's a bit of historical data from District 42's 2008 election cycle with Incumbent Senator Bundlin' Dave Adelman against Republican Altaf Galeyev.

Bundlin' Dave 31 DEC 2008 report:

$191,000 raised, $28,823 spent on 51,409 votes = 56 cents a vote


Republican Altaf Galeyev 31 DEC 2008 report:

$3,915 raised, $3,633 spent on 12,154 votes = 29 cents a vote

We're sure that Senator Carter's 2014 campaign will be more in line with Ex-Senator Adelmen's last election once he's fully enmeshed and immersed in the privilege and perks of incumbency. Let's hope so because if he's still gotta pay $31 a vote to get elected in a 50,000+ race the costs will break the $1.5 million threshold. That's kind of steep for a State Senate Race.