Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed raised nearly $280,000 for his reelection campaign in the last half of 2011, according to disclosure reports filed this month with state ethics officials.
That brings the first-term mayor's fundraising totals to nearly $3.78 million since he launched his mayoral run in 2008. About $2.5 million, or two-thirds of those funds, came before the runoff election on Dec. 1, 2009.
The campaign spent roughly $104,000 in the latest six-month period on events, phone service, catering, storage, software and other items, leaving it with about $689,000 in cash on hand as of Dec. 31.
Those figures were disclosed in data released to the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission.
The funds raised were less than half the tally raised in the first six months of the year, when the first-term mayor raised nearly $640,000. To date, Reed has no prominent challenger for the 2013 mayoral election.
"I am going to run for reelection," Reed told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in December. "And I am going to win."
The most recent round of fundraising show 240 separate donations from a who's-who of Atlanta business and politics. Frank Blake, chief executive of Home Depot, gave $1,000. Carol Tomé, the company's chief financial officer, gave the same amount, with the company's political action committee chipping in $2,500.
John Brock, chairman and CEO of soft drinks bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises, gave $2,500. Keisha Lance Bottoms, a member of Atlanta's City Council, gave $1,000.
Reed's campaign also spread money around to supporters. It wrote checks of $2,500 apiece to a group called "Friends of Aaron Watson" -- supporters of at-large City Councilman Aaron Watson -- and "The Committee to Elect H. Lamar Willis." Willis has been a reliable ally of Reed's on the City Council.
Reed's campaign spent thousands of dollars with AT&T and T-Mobile for phone expenses, $900 for disc jockeys -- $500 for the mayor's birthday celebration and $400 for a separate fundraising event -- and $177 for flower arrangements. Campaign officials met for official business meetings at the Corner Bakery on Peachtree Street and at Proof of the Pudding on Monroe Drive.
Last year, Reed pledged to refund contributions from airport concessionaires during an open procurement covering restaurants and bars at the airport. That period began in late March. The City Council approved Legislation authorizing the contracts in early January.
Recently, Reed said the money in question was only a small piece of his total fundraising.
"It's a rounding error," Reed told the City Council on Jan. 3. "That's why I can give them back."
The disclosures, covering July 1 through Dec. 31, show 20 refunds amounting to more than $23,000. The refunds included $500 to the president of Hartsfield Hospitality Inc., $7,500 to people affiliated with Atlanta Bread Co., and $1,000 to an executive of Roark Capital Group, which owns Arby's and Moe's Southwest Grill.
Reed, who estimates that he has made more than 500 speeches as mayor, said he focused more on policy issues than on fundraising in 2011's second half. Occupy Atlanta was a priority in the fall, and a round of concessions proposals at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport worth more than $3 billion came to the forefront as well, he said. Reed said the last 100 days have been his busiest since taking office.
"Our ability to focus on fundraising was significantly reduced," he said this week. "We scaled back fundraising activities significantly."
Still, the campaign has hit its quarterly fundraising goals, he said.
Kerwin Swint, a political scientist at Kennesaw State University, said it is not unusual for fundraising to ebb and flow over the course of a term. "I don't think (Reed) is going to be worried at all," Swint said.
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