The Vincent Gray reelection campaign begins in earnest Saturday, with a noon rally and kickoff speech at THEARC in Southeast Washington that will start an 11-week sprint to the April 1 Democratic primary.
The discussion got down to brass tacks, the attendees said, with specific fundraising goals discussed. Gray’s opponents, who have been in the race for six months or more, already have amassed war chests approaching $1 million. Gray, who reported no contributions or expenditures on his first and only campaign finance filing, will have to shake the money tree quickly and vigorously to mount a campaign equivalent in resources to the current fundraising front-runners.
Two persons said they understood the goal to be to collect $1 million by the next campaign fundraising deadline, on Jan. 31. Another person said the goal was to raise between $750,000 and $1 million by that time.
Campaign manager Chuck Thies, who spoke at the meeting, on Friday pushed back on the notion that the campaign is seeking to raise $1 million in three weeks, saying he “mentioned a bunch of different numbers.”
“I sought to inspire the people there to get down to business,” he said. “In order for us to do the things we want to do, we want to have the resources to do them.”
The finance committee, for now, appears not to have a chairman. Carmen said he agreed to host the kickoff meeting but said he is not leading the fundraising effort for Gray. “I just think he’s been a great mayor and deserves a second term,” he said.
Thies said more than 40 fundraisers have been lassoed into the Gray effort thus far, and a finance chairman will be named later in the campaign. But the campaign has hired a finance director, Arielle Linsky, a D.C. native with experience in national political fundraising, including Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. She also has strong local D.C. ties — she is the daughter of Susan Linsky, an executive at District-based Roadside Development and a former economic development aide to then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams.