Ranker maintains money lead, Henderson second, Van Luven third

To start it off, I must tell you that the Washington state Public Disclosure Commission has updated their campaign contribution and expenditures database Web site and it is awesome. Very user friendly and easy to use. Check it out, right here.

And I’m perusing it to show you that the 40th Legislative District Senate race is seeing some huge money figures in this primary season.  Democrat Kevin Ranker has raised $63,553.88 and spent $31,406.81 according to the most recent PDC filings.  Candidates had to turn in their 21-day pre-primary contribution and expenditure information Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Democrat Ken Henderson, who began the race with a huge money lead due to more than 75 percent of his contributions coming from members of the state optometrist association he used to be heavily involved in, is now at $55,300.58 raised and $25,587.09 spent.

Republican Steve Van Luven is third with $23,898.72 and nearly all of it spent. He’s paid out $22,359.41 during the campaign and, according to the filings, has a little more than $1,539 on hand.

Paul Gonzales, who has dropped out of the race, is fourth with $4,824.76 raised and basically all of it spent. Hue Beattie, still in the race, has raised $2,292.80 and spent $1,497.83.

Van Luven criticized his opponents during the interview I had with him awhile back for raising so much and not spending even half of it.  “I’m looking at the top two right now, that’s my goal,” he said. “I don’t care if I have a penny in the bank on August 20.”  His two largest money-raising opponents appear to disagree with that strategy, and have still spent more than him on the campaign so far.

And, by the way, though Henderson has a large amount of contributions from optometrists, it should be noted that the other two candidates in the money race appear to have their own special interest constituencies.  Steve Van Luven has received about $5,900 from the development and oil industry, based on contributions that could be identified as such. That’s 24.7 percent of his contributions.

I identified $20,450 in Ranker’s contributions — nearly every single one of his top contributions included — that came from environmental interests. Since he’s endorsed by the Washington Conservation Voters I believe that he’s gotten even more contributions on the list from their contribution machine. I can guarantee you there’s more, I just don’t have the time right now. I’ll try to update later after I vet the list another time.

Interesting fact: One of the contributors is William D. Ruckelshaus (and his wife, Jill), the first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He now lives in Seattle and works for an investment group.