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Thursday, October 05, 2006

3Q Fundraising Reports Start to Trickle In

Posted by James L.

Up until 9/29, money was the often the best indicator of a candidate's chances of success. That's still the case today, but the macro factors introduced by the scandal surrounding the House Republican Leadership cover-up of Mark Foley's appetite for young congressional pages may mitigate the Republicans' sizable cash-on-hand lead in many hot House races this year--quite possibly Senate races as well. Look at it this way: it doesn't help them anywhere. There are no heroes in the House Republican caucus on this issue.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not predicting that Democrats will win 100 seats in some kind of tsunami. But Republicans will get less mileage out of their warchests this year with Mark Foley and Dennis Hastert gobbling up headlines, while Democratic messages on values and security will carry more weight.

That said, third quarter fundraising reports are starting to trickle in. If you know of any fundraising figures for any campaign, please share the numbers in the comments. I'll update this thread accordingly. Here's what I've seen so far:

VA-Sen:

Jim Webb (D): $3.5m raised ($2.7m cash-on-hand; $4.6m total)

That's a pretty good increase, but he'll need even more to swamp out Allen in an expensive state like Virginia.

PA-07:

Joe Sestak (D): $1.14m raised ($1.53 CoH; $2.27m total)
Curt Weldon (R-Inc.): $0.91m raised ($1.12 CoH)

Simply stunning.

UPDATE (David): Some numbers from a couple of Republicans:

John Kline (R, MN-02): $173K raised, $775K CoH
Shelley Capito (R, WV-02): $800K raised, $1.04M CoH

Kline's opponent is FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley, who had just $100K on hand as of August 23rd. A recent SUSA poll here was not a cause for optimism, showing Kline with a 55-35 lead.

Meanwhile, Mike Callaghan is running against Capito. I really like Mike, but this has been a tough uphill battle all the way. WV-02 is not a wealthy district, and raising money here without national help is hard. Capito, meanwhile, has gotten a whopping 44% of her donations from PACs - Callaghan's taken just 2% of his total from that source.

One possible ray of light here is that Capito is on the board which oversees congressional pages, whose GOP overseer (Rep. John Shimkus) utterly failed to do his job. Callaghan has called on Capito to resign from the page board, but Capito has predictably pled ignorance. it remains to be seen what the fallout is from this entire sordid episode.

Posted at 10:00 PM in 2006 Elections, Fundraising | Technorati

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Comments

Hip Hip hurray. Tis' the time again. Seriously this is the most exciting, supenseful time of the year for us political junkies. I can't wait for more fundraising reports to come in. It's simply stunning that Sestak manged to pull in 1,114,000 in one quarter. It's fantastic that he has a cash on hand advantage over Weldon now. I want to see Donnelly, Hill, Ellsworth, Perlmutter, Braley, Klein, Massa, Duckworth, Madrid, Wetterling, and Mahooney's financial returns most of all, but really I want to see everything. This is the best part, seeing who's had the best fundraising, and who's beating whom in cash on hand, or coh.
jw

Posted by: ArkDem at October 4, 2006 06:04 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

In the Ohio Senate race, Sherrod Brown's campaign has announced that it raised almost $3 million in the 3Q and has $1.2 million left on hand.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061010/NEWS09/610100391

Posted by: hilltopper at October 10, 2006 12:57 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment