The comprehensive campaign finance reports candidates were required to file for the month of June revealed a handful of candidates have continued to pull far ahead of the rest of the field in their respective races.
The report filed by Senator Tommy Tuberville, who launched his campaign for governor in late May, shows he received over $350,000. The largest donation was $50,000 from personal injury law firm Cunningham Bounds.
The Tuberville campaign spent $215,215.58 in June, mainly on the services of marketing agency TAG LLC and Republican polling firm Cygnal as well as salaries for campaign staff. It ended the month with a hair under $3.8 million.
Democratic candidate for governor Chad “Chig” Martin filed his first monthly campaign finance report yesterday as well.
An Enterprise businessman who told APR last month he “just want[s] to bring people together,” Martin raised just $2,235.19 in cash donations over the month of June. The largest single donation he received was $250, but he also assisted his own campaign with over $4,000 of in-kind contributions.
No other candidates for governor have filed campaign finance reports yet, but five candidates in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor did.
Secretary of State Wes Allen and state Ag Commissioner Rick Pate both recorded relatively successful fundraising numbers, receiving $128,300 and $36,300 respectively.
The two have been widely seen as the major candidates in the race for lieutenant governor given their past success at running for state office and political connections. However, three minor candidates still remain in the race: Nicole Wadsworth, Dean Odle and Patrick Bishop.
APR reported in early June that Nicole Wadsworth’s campaign for lieutenant governor had been misrepresenting her academic credentials. The campaign told members of the press she had a PhD in economics from the University of Alabama while she had actually been given a PhD in Christian theology by the unaccredited North Central Theological Seminary without ever completing a dissertation.
Wadsworth gave her campaign over $500 in in-kind contributions last month. On the monthly campaign finance report, her full name for those contributions is listed as “Dr. Nicole J. Wadsworth.”
Her campaign also received $28,515 in cash contributions and over $5,000 in in-kind contributions during June. Its largest expenditure was almost $6,000 on “consultant/polling” services from HMW Consulting, LLC, which was founded by her former campaign manager Hunter Weathers.
Weathers left the Wadsworth campaign in early June, citing “persistent misinformation and ongoing internal miscommunications” as the primary cause for his departure.
Dean Odle, a pastor from Opelika who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2022, received no cash donations in June. However, he reported giving his own campaign an in-kind donation of $85 and a loan of $12,573.36.
In January, APR reported that Odle had published a lengthy tome in 2019 arguing that the earth is flat. The book also claimed that “Judaism” is controlled by the agents of Satan.
Patrick Bishop self-funded his campaign for lieutenant governor in June as well, donating $2,000 of his own money. He then spent $1,330 with Addison Designs on an “advertising” expenditure.
While a political newcomer, Bishop is a veteran and deputy in the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office. He appears to be the only Republican candidate for lieutenant governor this cycle who has gone on record supporting Medicaid expansion, although Odle said he would be “willing to consider” it while running in 2022.
