The latest financials for the front runners in the Houston mayor’s race show that Gene Locke has taken in $32,660 plus $130 for food from the Andrews Kurth law firm -- where he is a partner -- in the three-month period ending Sept. 24.

Contextually speaking, it's not a large sum; Locke, a former city attorney, raised $949,000 during that period and has $1.1 million on hand.

Kurth lawyers also contributed $46,500 in the first half of the year, including a $10,000 chunk that came from the firm itself.

Kurth, like a number of local law firms, does some business for the city of Houston. Kurth also handles a lot of legal work for the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, where Locke made some decent cash before stepping aside to pursue his mayoral run and in which the city has an interest.

Meanwhile, another big name in the race, City Councilman Peter Brown, reported raising at least $27,600 in the last reporting period from people who identified themselves as working for growth-and-development related interests, according to a Texas Watchdog analysis of campaign finance records. That figure includes donations from Realtors, architects, developers, contractors, engineers and the dean of the University of Houston's school of architecture.

Brown, an urban planner by training who is married to an heir to the Schlumberger oilfield services fortune, raised a total of $121,702.04 last period, and also lent his campaign $1.7 million. He reported having $1.9 million on hand.

Of the other front runners, Annise Parker, the incumbent city controller, raised $425,490, in the last period and had $223,000 on hand, while Roy Morales raised $18,719 in the last period and reported having $9,852 on hand.

The money situation is all everyone has been talking about in the mayor's race since these new reports came out. Just a few quick highlights:
+ Off the Kuff breaks down the numbers while noting that Locke is only just now starting TV ads; a follow-up post looks at who flubbed the forms and who hasn't filed.
+ Mary Benton's On the Beat: "It appears that Brown is doing very little to grow a strong grass roots campaign, and is using the money from his personal piggy bank to keep his slick TV commercials on the air through election day."
+ Martha Griffin, she of Musings, delves into former Police Chief C.O. Bradford's campaign finance filing -- he's running for an at-large council seat -- and notes that his report says he busted the city's legal cap on donations from an individual.
+ Miya Shay at ABC-13: "Even though Parker has less money than her two main opponents, she’s been in elected office longer than anyone else in the campaign. She has some city wide name ID, and she was the second person to buy television advertising. Those are all aspects of the campaign that works to her advantage. However, if she’s not able to sustain the TV ads during this final month, there are going to be problems."

And check out:
+ Nancy Sims at Mayoral Musings
+ Rick Casey's column in the Chronicle
+ Greg's Opinion

We're on the lookout for other substantive posts on mayoral money. Comment on this item below with a link or, if you're on Delicious.com, shoot it to us by tagging it "for:texaswatchdog" (minus the quote marks). E-mail works fine, too -- news@texaswatchdog.org. We're also on Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and about a dozen other services as texaswatchdog, too, so feel free to send 'em on.

And you can do your own research on campaign finance on the city secretary's campaign finance Web site.

Election Day is Nov. 3. Early voting starts Oct. 19, and you can see all the early voting times and locations in Harris County at this link.