Who’s on top in the Rockville Mayor and Council race? If you based it on money, it would be Mark Pierzchala for Mayor and Barry Jackson, Adam Van Grack, and Kate Fulton for City Council (I suspect Izola Shaw is among them, however, she did not submit a financial report by the deadline). The status of the remaining candidates remain ambiguous, and even the initial insights from the financial reports for these four top-seated candidates warrant further examination.

Among the Council candidates, Barry Jackson, Adam Van Grack, and Kate Fulton have each raised more than $20,000 to date, allowing them to run a well-rounded effective campaign. In the 2019 campaign, successful candidates raised about $15,000. To take the lead among Fulton and Van Grack, Jackson loaned himself $20,000. The remaining candidates have raised less than $10,000 to date, putting them on roughly equal footing (again, Harold Hodges did not submit reports so we can assume he is not an active candidate). Among the latest campaign finance reports were several surprises:

• Richard Gottfried attracted only two donors, including Art Stigile, the treasurer of Mark Pierzchala’s campaign.
• Danniel Belay posted an extraordinary growth in contributions from $0 by October 3 to $5,850 by the end of the month, but only one $50 donation came from a Rockville resident. The rest came from outside of the city, state, or United States.
• Ricky Mui raised just over $2,000 but spent more than $2,500 for catering and Chinese lion dancers at a fundraiser, so he actually fell behind. There’s also an unusual comment that his campaign owes Brigitta Mullican, a Rockville resident, $1,286 for 1200 printed mailers.

The Mayoral race contains the biggest surprises as both candidates have raised more than $65,000, overshadowing the council candidates: $67,303 for Monique Ashton and an extraordinary $146,677 for Mark Pierzchala. To achieve those record-setting numbers required loaning themselves record-setting amounts in this month: $35,143 for Monique Ashton and $90,000 for Mark Pierzchala. Combined with their loans for the previous periods (both are incumbents carrying loans from the 2019 campaign), Ashton has debts of $51,678 and Pierzchala has a whopping debt of $126,500. Many residents assume that the Mayor and Council are volunteers, but they are considered “part time” positions and given an “annual stipend” of $37,560 for the Mayor and $30,483 for council members. If Pierzchala wins, it will take more than three years of his four-year term to pay back this loan. Is it worth it? Evidently, it is for him.

Compared to the 2019 campaign, the amounts raised for 2023 have reached new heights. Most of it is spent on printing and mailing campaign literatures to homes of Rockville residents, which seems to be the most effective way to connecting with voters. If the City changes from city-wide to campaign districts, it will make the cost to run for office much less expensive and open it up to more residents.