A financial report filed Wednesday by the re-election campaign of Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, showed $50,703 in contributions during the last three months of 2017 — the lowest the campaign has reported in any quarter during its decade-long existence.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reviewed the campaign’s financial reports reflecting total contributions, spending, and cash-on-hand per quarter dating back to its first filing in July 2007. Until Wednesday’s report, the campaign’s slowest quarter of fundraising was the last three months of 2007, when it reported $52,703 in total contributions.

The red line is money spent. The green line is money raised. Hover over the points to see dollar amounts. Graphic by Daniel Wheaton


Hunter has also seen more spending than usual, in part because of legal expenses. He is under federal criminal investigation as a result of personal spending of his campaign funds.

His contributors were mostly defense and other contractors whose businesses are affected by Hunter’s actions in Congress.

There was one individual contributor from an address in Hunter’s district. The donor, Molly Sylvester, is listed in Hunter’s spending reports as chief executive officer of Vapin’ The 619, a small business with a location in El Cajon and another in Clairmont. She gave Hunter’s campaign $2,500 in the 2016 election cycle and $2,000 in the last quarter of 2017.

Hunter has been seen as a champion of the vaping industry, to the point that one advocacy group sought an ethics review of his activities.


Methodology: In election years, campaigns file more than one spending report per quarter. In such cases, the San Diego Union-Tribune combined total contributions and expenditures from all the reports covering the three-month period. Figures have been rounded to the nearest dollar.

morgan.cook@sduniontribune.com