The election night vote counts released by the Texas Secretary of State and posted at <
https://team1.sos.state.tx.us/enr/results/nov04_175_state.htm> show James Arthur Strohm polling 38,592 votes, or 20.02% in Texas Senate District 14.
Those numbers may shift slightly as absentee and provisional ballots are counted. Multiply Strohm's total by 4 to get Kirk Watson's approximate total.
It's more compelling to consider how much was spent per vote by the two gentlemen on the ballot. Neither candidate did diddley-squat as far as actual campaigning. If anything, Strohm was the more active candidate because he responded to more surveys and questionnaires than Watson, his incumbent opponent.
The following figures include all reports filed in 2014, but not reports for expenditures through election day. Some 2013 expenses are included; the Texas Senate has a four-year term so all expenses for this election cycle are not included. Only reports filed by both candidates are compared.
Watson's total expenditures for 2014 reporting to date exceed half a million dollars.
Strohm spent $6.31. For his whole campaign, start to finish.
That is $0.000164 spent per vote.
Watson spent somewhere north of $3.25 per vote, or about 20,000 times more per vote.
Final financial reports will be available online in a few weeks from the Texas Ethics Commission <
http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/> .
If you wonder why Libertarians scare the other parties so much, this is a perfect example of why. We do so much more for so much less, if we were to come into power, all the political consultants and other parasites would be out of a job. And we'd run our offices like we run our campaigns, with saving our constituents' money at every step.
We wouldn't just drown big government in the bathtub (thank you, Grover Norquist, for that wonderful image), we'd also bury the remains in the compost heap to grow our non-Monsanto organic heirloom tomatoes next year.
Ob-ski content: With government mandated costs removed from ski areas, you could expect to see a 10 to 20% reduction in the cost of your lift tickets.
P.S. That vote total is the same as having 38,592 people "like" you on a social network in just 12 hours.