D.C. Shadow Senator Michael D. Brown

Money isn’t everything when it comes to elections, and Michael D. Brown is proof of that.

The incumbent D.C. shadow senator managed to win yesterday’s Democratic primary, easily besting challenger Pete Ross. The most impressive part of Brown’s win was the expense at which it came—to Ross, that is.

Ross, a furniture entrepreneur who recently made a name for himself by requesting jail time for a D.C. voting rights-related arrest, put $200,000 of his own money into the race for the unpaid position. According to campaign finance documents filed a week ago, he spent $126,000 of it on a campaign apparatus that included eight paid staffers and thousands of campaign signs that blanketed the city. (The number doesn’t include any spending in the last week of the campaign, though.)

Brown, by comparison, spent a measly $1,900, though he won the primary with 58 percent of the vote. (Some back-of-the-envelope math finds that Ross likely spent close to $10 for each of the 13,390 votes he got.)

As usual, though, Brown may have benefited from the good fortune of sharing a name with a popular and well-known At-Large member of the D.C. Council, Michael A. Brown. Or he could just be one of the toughest campaigners out there—in his 2006 race, he got 62,000 votes, more than even Adrian Fenty.

Moving forward, Brown faces a November match-up with Republican shadow senator hopeful Nelson Rimensnyder.