There goes Bell’s big cash-on-hand advantage

Bad news for Erik Curren, right? That he had only $3,500 in campaign cash on hand in his 20th House District race when you looked at his report on the Virginia Public Access Project website, and his Republican opponent, Dickie Bell, who had only been in the race for a month as of the end of the reporting period, had $12,290 on hand.

We’ll look past, for the moment, the fact that 60 percent of Bell’s campaign receipts came from the current 20th District incumbent, Chris Saxman, who surprised us all in July when he dropped out of the race. Because what interests me when I leave vpap.org and peruse Bell’s report on the State Board of Elections website is the listing under Schedule F, Debts Remaining Unpaid.

The line item there for Bell comes to more than $8,600 all told, all but $718 of it to The Printing Press in Harrisonburg, which is owned by Rockingham County GOP chair Mike Meredith.

Kinda puts that cash-on-hand figure in perspective, doesn’t it?

Considering the unpaid campaign debts, Bell actually had in the area of $3,600 cash at the end of the July 1-Aug. 31 reporting period.

So there goes Bell’s big cash-on-hand advantage.

– Story by Chris Graham