Election Day is this weekend and according to the latest campaign finance reports some candidates are spending leaps and bounds more than their competition.
"It's gotten out of balance," said Jim Gerlt, District 4 City Council candidate. "That's why one of the reasons, this time, I have not made an appeal for any funds whatsoever. A lot of friends have said 'we need to keep you there.' A lot of the business people, the home builders pack, the realtors pack, they said we need to keep you there, so they've made contributions. A lot of folks that have sent me money said they need to keep me there but I've not asked for a single dime from anybody."
Finance reports indicate Gerlt has spent nearly $10,000 on his campaign. His opponent, Steve Massengale, has spent slightly more than $8,000.
Massengale said the amounts spent in the race for District 4 are really not out of line considering how much is being spent in other races.
"Historically if you'll look, there are council races in the past that have similar amounts of money to what I've spent," Massengale said. "I would also look at the mayoral race and look at the dollars on that side. When you're running city-wide, it takes a tremendous amount of money to be able to communicate your campaign to the voters."
The reports show Dan Pope has spent more than $107,000 in his race for mayor. That's about $87,000 more than his nearest opponent, Todd Klein, about $100,000 more than Ysidro Gutierrez, and more than $107,000 more than Victor Hernandez, who is running a bare bones campaign and has only spent a hundred dollars to register for the election.
"I mean, we built a plan and we're right on the plan that we set up in November when we announced," Pope said.
He said the amount of money he has spent is not something new to Lubbock.
"This is very far from unprecedented in Lubbock mayoral campaigns," he said. "I know you are new to the community, but this is something that is very often done. In fact, our budget was significantly more than we are going to end up spending. We've been able to do it on less than what we planned on originally."
Ysidro Gutierrez said he does not mind the big budget expense.
"Any campaign is free to raise any amount of money they want to raise and they're free to spend any amount of money they want to spend," Gutierrez said. "I fully support that. As a matter of fact, I applaud it. They have their strategy and I have mine. they have their plan to win as I have my plan to win. The money that you see on my campaign finance report, to me, is all I need for my strategy and for victory."
The financial reports indicate in District 1, Juan Chadis has the highest expenditure at just less than $6,000.
In District 2, the biggest spender is Christopher Moore with a little more than $6,600 spent.
