Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison reports collecting $413,000 in 2015 to pay campaign bills

Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison filed a report with the Secretary of State’s office last week reporting he collected more than $400,000 in campaign contributions during the past year.

The annual report also states that Hutchison spent some $88,000 in 2015.

According to the annual campaign contribution and expense report, Hutchison collected $405,200 in contributions of $100 or more, $8,139 in in-kind contributions and just $177 in contributions of less than $100 for a total of $413,516.

The contributions came from what observers in Nevada call “all the usual suspects” — major casinos, major lobbyists, mining companies, health care companies and Nevada’s biggest law firms.

By contrast, Gov. Brian Sandoval reported raising just $3,615 in 2015. Like Hutchison he reported significant expenditures — $146,826.

Both officials incurred those expenses this past year in the process of paying off campaign debts to a long list of services providers such as media outlets for television ads.

While Hutchison raised $1.98 million in 2014 to run for the office (which pays $64,000 a year), he spent $2.5 million to defeat Democrat Lucy Flores and needed to continue fundraising in 2015 to make up the difference. He won handily, however, with a fraction under 60 percent of the vote.

Sandoval collected over $3.5 million for his 2014 re-election run despite having a virtual cakewalk against relatively unknown and underfunded Democrat Bob Goodman. Sandoval collected almost 71 percent of the vote.