Where The Bucks Stopped. By Jim Nintzel WHEN ELECTION night rolled around last month, Republican Vicki Cox-Golder and her supporters were shocked to find themselves stomped by Democrat Sharon Bronson in the three-way race for Pima County Supervisor Ed Moore's District 3 seat. At the Republicans' big election night bash at the Doubletree, Cox-Golder campaign chairman Bill Arnold was so stunned by his candidate's collapse that he could only tell the Tucson Citizen, "It's not over until the last vote is counted." Unfortunately for Cox-Golder and Arnold, it was over the minute the absentee vote was released. Bronson took a 20-point lead at that point and never looked back, winning the race with more votes than Cox-Golder and Moore combined. Cox-Golder had every reason to feel confident. She'd been telling people for months that her internal polls showed her easily outpacing both Bronson and Moore. A poll done by Bronson's campaign three weeks before the election showed Cox-Golder with nearly 50 percent of the vote, while Bronson and Moore hovered around 20 percent. Nearly 60 percent of voters polled didn't even recognize Bronson's name. All of that changed when Moore poured $19,000 into his campaign, which removed the limits on personal contributions for the other candidates in the race. With Cox-Golder co-opting his fundraising base among developers and land speculators, Moore was forced to reach into his own wallet to pay for his own campaign. Although he now maintains he knew he'd lose the race, Moore says he spent his own cash to make a respectable showing. Moore spent $51,390 on his campaign and gathered 16 percent of the vote. The Bronson camp, anticipating Cox-Golder would loan her campaign a chunk of money in the final stretch, had already lined up a group of deep-pocketed contributors. As soon as Moore's personal loan relaxed the limits, the money began to pour in. According to campaign finance reports turned in last week, Bronson's big contributors included former Deputy County Manager Bruce Postil and his wife Ann ($4,540), James and Pearl Miller ($4,540), William and Alice Roe ($1,540), Maurice and Amy Schlossberg ($2,040), Jane Schwerin ($1,070) and Susan Small ($770). In the last weeks of the campaign, Bronson was able to raise $52,343, bringing her total to $99,897, including $10,133 she lent the campaign. The money paid for a salvo of radio and TV spots, phone banks and a handful of carefully targeted mailers, all designed to raise both Bronson's name recognition and Cox-Golder's negatives--a strategy that paid big dividends on election day. Cox-Golder herself wasn't hurting in the fundraising department. In the final weeks of the race, she raised an additional $70,430, bringing her total warchest to $152,964, including $60,000 she personally contributed to the campaign. Two other independent campaign committees were formed to aid Cox-Golder's bid for office. Both hired a Phoenix firm, HighGround, which is run by Republicans Chuck Coughlin and Wes Gullet, former aides to Gov. J. Fife Symington III who are known for their penchant for hardball politics. The Democracy Project, created by Arizona Republican Committeeman Mike Hellon, received $65,550 from the state Republican Party, which was spent primarily on Cox-Golder's campaign. (Although independent campaign committees are supposed to function without any contact with the candidate's campaign committee, Hellon's wife Toni was on Cox-Golder's campaign committee.) The second independent campaign committee, created by the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, the Arizona Association of Realtors and the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, didn't manage to raise the money they had hoped to. Although representatives of the group had said they intended to build a warchest of up to $50,000, they were only able to raise $15,145. The bulk of the group's money came from the Realtors of Arizona Political Action Committee, which kicked in $10,000 in a one-week period at the end of October. While about a dozen local developers also contributed to the effort, most only gave $100. All total, more than $231,000 was spent on the Cox-Golder campaign, breaking all records for campaign spending in Pima County. In the end, though, all that money could buy was 32 percent of the vote.

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