Wedge's Numbers -- A Bit Off

The Herald has a story today about the pols with the biggest campaign war chests, but I'm afraid Dave Wedge is going to be a little red-faced when he realizes his numbers are all wrong.

He made a common mistake: not realizing that the monthly campaign-finance bank reports do not include funds that have been transfered to other banks, usually in the form of CDs.

So for instance, Wedge has State Treasurer Tim Cahill sitting fourth on his list, with $429,000 cash on hand. But Cahill's committee has roughly another $2 million in CDs; he is actually far and away number one. (See my year-end list here, second page.) Likewise, William Galvin really has $2 million, not $600,000.

I'll give Wedge the benefit of assuming that he's only including pols holding state offices. (In my list, six of the top ten spots were held by county or city officials -- and I didn't even include the US Senators and Congressmen this time, because their FEC year-end reports weren't in yet.) Nevertheless, I suspect one of the first calls Wedge will get this morning will come from the Mayor's office -- Wedge's list would suggest that Tom Menino failed to make the top 20, and must have less than $150,000 on hand. That's not going to scare off any challengers. In fact, Tommy has about $1 million. The second call: Michael Flaherty.

Still, it's a little amusing to see the Herald scream of "Staggering Stash Of Cash," when it only saw a fraction of the real dollar amounts. Oops!