2024 City of El Paso election most expensive in last decade
EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- Campaign and donor spending broke the bank in more ways than one in 2024 for the City of El Paso.
Between the races for the next mayor, city council and municipal court judges, expenditures to get your vote last year almost equaled the last two mayoral elections combined. It was definitively the most expensive election in the last decade - and that rate has been increasing according to the campaign finance documents maintained by the El Paso City Clerk.
Total spending by campaigns and on their behalf by donors in 2013 was about $700,000. That number is an estimate due to in-kind donations not being measured the same way at that time compared to the following years.
In 2017, $974,637.52 was spent in the election that brought Dee Margo into the mayor's office. That was the last year that city elections were not held at the same time as the presidential election.
In 2020, Oscar Leeser found his way back into city hall in a landslide runoff election. Overall spending across all city campaigns was $1,521,579.42, breaking past the million dollar mark.
But 2024 blows them both out of the water with $2,439,424.61 spent across all races in the City of El Paso. Current Mayor Renard Johnson's campaign alone rode a wave of $1,097,264.24 in expenditures into his new seat in city hall in both campaign spending and in-kind donations.
