Analysis of the 2004 override YES and NO campaigns’ finances

Campaign finance reports for the 2004 override YES and NO campaigns are available at the Lexington Town Clerk’s Office in paper form. Lists of voters in previous elections and the census of residents are available at the Lexington Town Clerk’s Office in electronic form. Those sources provide names of individuals who made campaign donations of $50 or more, and each resident’s age, voting pattern, profession (most often), political party registration and address.

In the following analysis, ages are as of March 2004 and house values (available on the Lexington Assessor’s online database http://data.visionappraisal.com/lexingtonma/search.asp) are as of May 2005.

In 2004, the “Yes for Lexington” campaign spent $76,000 to promote a YES vote, more than 6 times the $12,000 the “Committee for an Affordable Lexington” spent to promote a NO vote.

On the YES side, 18 households contributed $1,000 to $5,500 each (there is no limit for donations to an override campaign), the Lexington Education Association (the teachers’ union) contributed $5,000 and 15 households contributed $500 to $1,000 each.

The largest individual donations were $5,000 apiece -- 12 of them --, and covered 79% of the YES campaign total expenditures: 11 were from individuals and one from the teachers' union. The 22 adults (in 11 households) who contributed $5,000 were, on average, 40 years old, live in homes with an average valuation of just over $1.5 million and had voted in 2.2 of the 6 Town elections preceding the 2004 override. Besides 1 person who was not registered to vote, the others were registered equally: 7 Democrats, 7 Republicans and 7 Unenrolled. 6 people in the 11 donor households worked at Bain Capital, the firm Mitt Romney belonged to before he became Governor.

Taken together, the 19 largest donations (each $1,000 or more) amounted to 90% of the YES campaign’s expenditures and the next 15 donations (each $500-$1,000) covered just about the remaining 10%. The YES campaign closed its books with a surplus of funds, and donated $18,000 to Lexington PTA Scholarships, $5,000 to the Lexington Council on Aging and $3,332 to the Lexington Food Pantry.

Adults in households that gave $1,000 or more to the YES campaign were, on average, 44 years old and live in homes with an average valuation of just over $1.4 million. Those who gave $500-$1,000 were, on average, 46 years old and live in homes with an average valuation of about $1.25 million.

The NO campaign received only 4 donations of $500 or more (the largest one was $2,000) totaling $3,600 or 30% of the NO campaign’s total expenditures. Adults in the 4 households were on average 73 years old and live in homes with an average valuation of just over $600,000.

Individual names of major donors to both campaigns are in an Excel spreadsheet available here.

Analysis prepared by Patrick Mehr 781-372-1055 patrick.mehr@gmail.com (5/23/06)