Perhaps everybody in the race is waiting until the summer to start raising money or they think they have enough money right now to run their races, but no one running for Lieutenant Governor had a stellar quarter of fundraising. The fundraising reports for three out of the four candidates running are out.

Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden, the lone Democrat, raised $15,000 in the quarter. He has $32,352.59 in the bank. Holden’s donations came nearly exclusively from the Baton Rouge metro area.

Former Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser raised $126,690 in the quarter. Nungesser though has $1,149,463.99 in the bank, but he spent over $1.125 million in the quarter. Among Nungesser’s donors were Senate President John Alario, Senator Danny Martiny (R-Metairie), and Debbie Skrmetta, the wife of Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta.

Jefferson Parish President John Young had the best quarter out of everyone, raising $347,890. Young now has over $2 million in the bank. Among the donors were Boysie Bollinger, Joe Canizaro, and Connick and Connick, LLC; which is the law firm run by Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick and his brother.

As of writing, State Senator Elbert Guillory (R-Opelousas) has yet to file a report.

Just for perspective, former Congressman Jeff Landry raised $440,000 for his race for Attorney General and he’s running against an incumbent.

The take aways are the following:

1. The New Orleans area business community is all in for John Young. This is to be expected because after all he is the president of the largest parish in Louisiana. Young’s campaign finance reports read like a whos who of the New Orleans business elite.
2. Billy Nungesser is spending lots of money. The question is can he sustain such a high burn rate, especially now that Young has nearly twice as much money on hand.
3. For some reason, Kip Holden is not raising a whole lot of money. $15,000 is pathetic, especially for a mayor of Baton Rouge. Holden’s strategy must be to rely on name recognition and party affiliation and hope he can squeeze out either Young or Nungesser to make the runoff.

I think we’re going to get a better sense of the race in the next quarter when this race starts to heat up. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this race is overshadowed by the first competitive governor’s race in 12 years and a highly competitive attorney general’s race.