Previously, we saw that Senate fundraising numbers for the third quarter were in. I noted that John Sharp reported raising $600,000, and I wondered if that was for real, or if once again he loaned himself a sizable chunk of that total. Though the FEC.gov page isn’t updated yet, I have my answer in the form of this PDF scan of Sharp’s toplines report, sent to me by the Bill White campaign. In it, you will see that as he did last quarter, Sharp loaned himself another $500,000, bringing the total amount of the money he’s loaned to his own campaign to $3.1 million. If we adjust the quarterly report to remove money loaned or self-donated to that candidate, the cumulative totals look like this:
Candidate Q3 raised Total raised ================================================ Bill White 1,100,000 5,500,000 Roger Williams 336,000 1,150,000 * Florence Shapiro 354,000 890,000 * Elizabeth Ames Jones 208,000 770,000 * John Sharp 100,000 670,000 Michael Williams 92,000 323,000
We don’t know yet how much, if any, money the candidates with asterisks have loaned themselves; Shapiro and Williams have done so before, Ames Jones has not. Looked at this way, White has still raised as much as everyone else put together. He’s in a different league than they are, and it’s no wonder the NRSC is freaking out over him. As for Sharp, he’s gotten some nice endorsements lately, but that hasn’t helped him raise any money. He said in the beginning, after he wrote that first $2.1 million check to himself, that he couldn’t self-finance this race. Something’s gotta give here.