Digging In: Kari Lake Spends 55k on 10k fundraiser at Trump's Mar-a-lago Resort

Last week Arizona gubernatorial candidates filed their first campaign finance reports. These reports detail the campaign's contributions and expenditures. Every cycle media and pundits will dig through these reports to identify things that give insiders an indication of how well campaigns will fair in the future.

Most money spent on campaigns is used for what they call "Direct Voter Contact". That's your canvassing, phone banking and advertising. Of course there are always costs to your initial fundraising but you should make money off of every event. That is why some of the details in Kari Lake's campaign finance report are causing so many concerns among her supporters.

The financial disclosure revealed many things about the campaign. Kari Lake is spending heavily on expensive consultants from DC, $145,000 on campaign merchandise and 52,000 on an event at mar-a-lago. That event is the one conservatives are scratching their head at.

When looking at the campaign finance reports it looks like Kari Lake raised only $9k for the over $50,000 event. One might say, "well not all events are successful" but this event was at attended by President Trump at his resort leading people to believe that either they don't know how to fundraise effectively even with the President's backing or that there is just not as much support for Kari Lake as some thought

The Governor's race has several months to go and there are several MAGA candidates running. It will be important to pay attention to who is able to sustain fundraising through the second quarter and who isn't. That and air time are the key factors at this time in the election cycle.