Callsen outraises $86.6K for House District 54 race against Brown and Norris

There are three Democrats seeking the party’s place on the ballot in the open race for the House District 54 which includes all of Charlottesville and parts of urbanized Albemarle County. 

Rio District School Board Member Katrina Callsen began the year with $10,509 in her campaign account. She raised $86,601 in cash from 178 donors and received $11,889 in in-kind contributions of more than $100. Add in one in-kind contribution of exactly $100 and that’s a total of $98,590. 

Callsen received a total of $40,000 from Sonjia Smith, $8,500 from Leadership of Educational Equity, and $5,000 from Clean Virginia. Her campaign spent $32,489 including $11,989 in in-kind contributions. Callsen’s campaign had $76,610 on hand as of March 31.  (campaign website)

Former Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris raised $28,861 from 66 donors with 20 over the $100 threshold for reporting an identity. These include $5,000 from Clean Virginia and $5,000 from the Charlottesville Parking Center. Norris was hired as that company’s general manager in March 2016

Norris spent $7,311 in the period to have a balance of $21,549 at the end of the period. (campaign website)

Bellamy Brown raised $7,375 in cash from 16 donors. He also loaned his campaign a total of $5,000. His campaign spent $6,256 and had $6,118 on hand as of March 31. (campaign website)

Another former Charlottesville Mayor was briefly in the race but withdrew. Nevertheless, David Brown raised $20,700 from 25 donors and received one in-kind contribution of $174. He spent $2,694 and declared the remaining $18,005 as surplus funds allowing him to close the campaign with a balance of zero. 

Dashad Cooper dropped out of the race to instead run for City Council. He transferred any funds raised this year over to an account for the Council race as I have reported elsewhere.


Before you go: The time to write and research of this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment comes from the April 18, 2023 edition of the program as part of a segment from the latest campaign finance reports that were due on April 15. This and other stories from this day were produced by data made readily available by the Virginia Public Access Project.

To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.

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