It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — the second quarter, that is.
For Haywood County state House candidate Rhonda Cole Schandevel, it was the spring of hope; she raised over $58,000 from more than 900 individual contributions, bringing her election cycle total to $100,528.
For Rep. Michele Presnell, R-Burnsville, it was the winter of despair; she had a dickens of a time fundraising, bringing in just $10,800 from seven PACs or candidates and a lone individual contributor. Her election cycle total wasn’t listed on the disclosure.
SEE ALSO: Republican mega-donor backs Presnell
“I am overwhelmed by the outpouring of support our campaign has received,” Schandeval said in a press release dated July 20. “This is just further proof that the people of Madison, Yancey and Haywood counties have had enough with being sold out to the highest bidder back in Raleigh.”
The fundraising disclosures seem to jive with the general sentiment on the street that Schandevel is a surprisingly viable Democratic candidate locked in a tight race with an increasingly unpopular Republican incumbent.
However, in an era when elections are more often bought than won, the “cautiously optimistic” Schandevel has great expectations but isn’t counting her chickens just yet — Presnell reported $35,094 in cash on hand at the start of the quarter to Schandevel’s $8,781.
Schandevel disclosed campaign spending of $34,060 during the same period, leaving her with a balance of $33,177; Presnell, in contrast, spent just $1,622 during that time, leaving her with $44,272 in the kitty and a slight fundraising edge over Schandevel.
Bolstering the idea that these aren’t exactly hard times for Presnell is the fact that has she has, historically, enjoyed tremendous support from party leadership. Her largest donation of the quarter — $5,100, or almost 50 percent of her total haul — came from Speaker of the House and fellow Republican Tim Moore of Cleveland County.
In 2014, the North Carolina Republican Party dumped more than $73,000 into her race, almost half of it on a direct mail campaign less than two weeks before Election Day.
That campaign may have made all the difference; it cost the NCGOP more than $5 per Presnell voter and helped her defeat Dean Hicks 13,858 to 13,169 — a difference of just 689 votes, or 2.5 percent.