Barack Obama may be the first Democrat in party history to enjoy a substantial fund raising advantage in the Santa Clarita Valley.
The SCV is generally well-deserving of its reputation as a conservative community that’s much more likely to support Republican presidential candidates than Democratic ones. All our elected representatives are Republicans from the city council to the statehouse to Washington, but in the 2008 Presidential Election, the Center for Responsive Politics paints a different picture of which presidential candidate Santa Claritans choose to support with their wallets.
The non-partisan group tracks private party donations to major candidates for President, the Senate, Congress, and other elected positions and offers an easy zip code search for local numbers. SCVTalk reader Mike ran the numbers and came up with some interesting results, detailed below.
From 2007 until now Santa Clarita residents have donated an astounding $99,095 to the Illinois Senator’s campaign for President.
That number -the sum total of all donations to Obama from eight SCV zip codes- was more than double the amount of money donated to Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for President. McCain has earned a total of $46,825 from SCV voters.
Here’s the breakdown by community:
From this chart, you can see it hasn’t even been close in most communities in Santa Clarita. Residents in Saugus, for instance, donated almost twice as much to Obama as they did to McCain. In Agua Dulce and ‘rural Saugus,’ that number was almost four times as much.
In fact, in all eight SCV zip codes, donations to Obama were substantially higher than donations to John McCain. Barack Obama even came close to raising the same amount of money in Valencia ($23,839) as Mitt Romney did during his abortive campaign ($26,575).
The only community where McCain came close to Obama is North Valencia, where residents donated some $2,000 less to McCain.
Of course, the chart doesn’t tell the whole story. Obama has been running for president for nearly two years now, and a substantial portion of these donations were likely made during the contentious and long primary season, when Obama fought for months to defeat Hillary Clinton.
John McCain, in contrast, locked up the Republican nomination back in February, and throughout the spring and summer, his campaign was largely in a holding pattern until the convention.
There’s other factors at play too. The greatest presidential fundraiser in Santa Clarita in the 2008 race was Mitt Romney. Romney paid two visits to the SCV in the last year: one before the primary in the fall of 2007 and one after he was largely out of the running in the spring of 2008. During this period, Romney raised even more than Obama did: $120,374 from all eight zip codes.
That, in the words of SCVTalk reader Mike, suggests that local Republicans “need to have their back scratched” before they will donate money. With two visits to the SCV and Buck McKeon as part of Romney’s campaign, local Republicans did pony up the cash for Romney.
Even so, local Republicans have had almost seven months to fall in behind McCain, so what’s stopping them from donating to McCain now? The list of donations to the Romney campaign reads like a “Who’s Who” of the SCV business, government and lobbyist circuit, but one is hard pressed to find the same names donating to McCain.
These figures only include donations made up until the end of 2Q 2008, so donations to both candidates after their respective party conventions are not reflected.
Still this must be heartening news to Barack Obama supporters and Democrats in Santa Clarita. If Obama has such appeal even in the SCV, maybe in the future local candidates with a (D) by their name will have more appeal too.