I told you on Sunday that they were holding a debate without press, at the request of Croosky’s campaign. I get it, the guy can’t talk off of a script. As it turns out, the details were even dumber than I was initially told. Some guy at the DCCC was actually making the demands for no press, and even no candidate questions for each other. He basically wanted robotic answers and no possibility of anyone slipping up. This is incredibly stupid and kind of gets to the point- they want to push an absolute potato of a candidate on us without testing anything about the guy. They’d rather wait until the general election to see how their guy handles being called out for being a crook. I get why. At a recent Lehigh Valley 4 All meeting, when asked about funding for Israel, Crooksy pulled his shirt up over his face and then proceeded to try and say he’d cut off war funding, but would let them keep the Iron Dome. Hopefully he knows the difference between the Iron Dome and the “Golden Domers” at Notre Dame, but I’m not holding my breath there. He was so awful in his answer that the video is now set to private. Anything to hide this man’s weakness. The problem is, their luck will run out there. For as much as I have released about Crooksy on here so far, the Republicans already have far more. A former fireman who decided not to share information with me about him instead recently took his dossier of interesting info to a Republican lobbyist in Washington. They’re going to tear this guy to shreds.

What’s actually the point of even having a debate if no one sees it? I’d argue that five of these seven candidates have very little to no name recognition right now, including the DCCC’s chosen potato. I mean, they’re debating in a room full of basically well informed, decided voters. No one else got to see it. No live stream, no videos, no press coverage. Did it even happen? If I didn’t have people in the room to tell me about it, I wouldn’t be able to prove it. Honestly, if the support staff doesn’t want these guys to debate, I think they’d be better off just saying don’t have the debate. Honestly, who even benefited from this?

I told you before that despite losing his manager to a job with the Governor, Republican Ryan Crosswell has a huge pile of money for his Congressional run. That’s sort of true. Yes, his shady out-of-town, union buster donors are writing him shit tons of money. He raised $443,757 in Q4, putting him at $1,144,864.79 for his 2025 fundraising. That’s pretty impressive. Until you look at the full report. Crosswell, who is virtually unknown yet to the voters of the 7th Congressional District, where he never lived until this election cycle, spent a whopping $532,615.04 so far in this election. No, he really hasn’t done any direct contact to voters yet. He has $612,250 on hand. That’s an astounding burn rate. I guess the important guys in DC really told him how to run his race. With that said, even this looks competent in the field. He has spent 46.5% of what he has raised so far. That’s absolutely incredible, and not in a good way.

Bob “Crooksy” Brooks must be taking the same advice, he’s just not as good at this. I guess that’s why Harrisburg bosses want to buy it for him. Crooksy got crushed again by Republican Crosswell, raising $301,698 even with the Governor’s help. To date, Crooksy has raised $609,957.05. He has spent an astounding $269,189.98 to date. This leaves him with $340,767.07. I couldn’t even believe his report. No one who doesn’t read this site knows who the hell this guy is yet, and he’s spent nearly half of his money already. If anyone hits him for stiffing his mother-in-law, hating Barack Obama, being a religious fanatic and gun nut, and posting racist shit online, he’ll have to divert his funds away from introducing himself to defending that. He’s spent 44% of his funds as is, and has little to show for it.

I have to admit, I did not think Lamont McClure would have this much trouble raising money, given his track record. But alas, here we are. McClure has raised $480,615.99 so far in the campaign, with $200k of that coming from himself. He raised just $21,770 in the last quarter. He has spent $193,025.79 to date. He has $287,590.20 on hand. Basically Crooksy has spent what he has on hand, Crosswell has spent more, and they’re still behind, which is really what he has to hang his hat on here. He has spent 40% of his money, which is far too much. His report is here. If everyone is going to be left throwing rocks though at the end, he probably wins that. The optics aren’t great, but he has less to introduce than these other folks.

Mark Pinsley’s campaign is in a worse version of the same situation. Pinsley raised $52,088 last quarter, and $125,194.46 for the year. He spent an utterly insane $75,177.31, or the majority of his money. He has $50,017.15 on hand, but also has a debt of $1,567.67. If you don’t believe me, check out his report. Listen, I actually like Mark personally, so don’t get this twisted. The guy has spent 60% of his money. I’m not sure anyone outside of Lehigh County knows much about him. He can basically afford like a little more than one piece of mail to the whole electorate right now.

Carol Obando-Derstine’s situation is interesting, because she raised six figures, but yet the finances look bleak. She raised $100,625 in Q4 and $431,919.36 for the year. She spent a crazy $308,411.36 so far, or most of her money. She has $123,508 on hand, and a $12,500 debt. She spent 71.4% of what she raised. You can check it out here. I guess she’s in a better place than Pinsley, but it feels like she should have spent much less.

Aiden Alexander Gonzalez report isn’t up yet, so we have no idea how he did. Lewis Arthur Shupe doesn’t even turn up a committee when you google him, so I’m going with God there.

Look, I think using fundraising numbers to pick your candidate is the dumbest thing ever. Does anyone really think the DCCC and national Democratic Party PACs aren’t going to come in here and spend in the general election? Of course they are, they have to, there’s no way we win the House and don’t win this seat- unless we nominate a dope of a candidate. You try to pick the candidate who has the best combination of good ideas and a chance to win, both at once. Perfect policy positions are meaningless if you have no shot of winning, and being the most electable candidate ever is worthless if you’re basically going to vote with the other side. The point of looking at these numbers is guessing what their chances of victory are. I don’t think any of them have enough money right now for the stretch run of this race. Television is expensive in the Philadelphia media market. Mail is not cheap in this day and age. Digital? Yeah, it’ll cost you. If you think field organizing is going to win you a race like this, just understand you need to scale up to a Congressional District’s sized field operation- which is expensive. Nobody has that here. Perhaps Crooksy’s dark money gets him there. Maybe Emily’s List gets Carol over the line. Maybe Crosswell just has another good quarter and out spends everyone two-to-one, and the fact that he’s a union-busting Republican doesn’t matter. Or, just maybe, McClure hangs on to this thing by spending wisely. I don’t know. This looks increasingly to me though like it’s a rock and spear chucking battle, and not an atomic age showdown.