Few times in the campaign has Sandre Swanson
been able to stand tall against Nancy Skinner.

STATE SENATE | DISTRICT 9 | According to the latest finance reports, the campaign of state Senate Ninth District candidate Sandre Swanson is nearly drowning in the red. Swanson’s mid-year totals reveal his campaign against Nancy Skinner has just $76,448 in the bank. In contrast, Skinner is sitting on $936,369 in cash on hand with roughly 100 days until Election Day. But it gets worse for Swanson.

Swanson’s current financial predicament is propped up by a $67,000 personal loan to his own campaign, posted June 28. Skinner’s campaign consultant Parke Skelton teased Swanson in a press release Tuesday, asserting the loan was “just to keep the lights on in his campaign office.”

Granted, the huge disparity between Skinner’s cash reserves and Swanson’s has existed from the start of this long campaign, which began more than a year ago.

Many East Bay politicos foresaw Swanson’s campaign would be greatly challenged by Skinner’s formidable campaign treasury, which truthfully, is mostly backed by a large amount of cash hoarded in her former Assembly campaign coffers and transferred in bulk last year. Then came the Primary Election Night demolishing featuring a nearly 18-point victory for Skinner over Swanson and the rest of the field.

That result, says many insiders, erased the little existing hope that Swanson could pull off an upset in November. Furthermore, Skinner’s 48 percent of the vote come close to achieving a majority of votes in the four-person primary and she captured not only her base in Berkeley, but outpaced Swanson in Oakland and Alameda, locales that Swanson needed to either win or be very competitive.

The current state of the race is somewhat of a surprise based on expectations from a year ago of a bruising, knockout, dragout, Dem-on-Dem-on-Dem clash between Skinner, Swanson and Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan. But Chan dropped out in early October for family reasons, while also suggesting she had calculated Skinner’s huge financial advantage was too much for anybody to overcome.

Perhaps, she was correct. And at this point, Skinner may not be counting the days to Election Day in November, but instead, to inauguration day in Sacramento sometime in early December.

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