Wow.
Rep. Beto O’Rourke
U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso, raised over $6.7 million for his U.S. Senate bid in the first quarter of 2018, according to his campaign, a staggering number that poses a new category of threat to Republican incumbent Ted Cruz.
The haul is easily O’Rourke’s biggest fundraising quarter yet, more than double his next-closest total for a three-month period. It also is more than any Democratic Senate candidate nationwide took in last quarter, O’Rourke’s campaign said.
Cruz has not released his first-quarter fundraising numbers yet, but O’Rourke’s $6.7 million total is on a different level than his previous hauls, which ranged from $1.7 million to $2.4 million. Those alone were good enough to outraise Cruz for three of the last four reporting periods.
Furthermore, the $6.7 million total came from more than 141,000 contributions — another record-busting number for O’Rourke.
[…]
O’Rourke’s campaign released the fundraising statistics Tuesday morning ahead of the April 15 deadline to report it to the Federal Election Commission. Cruz has not offered any numbers for the full quarter, though he disclosed raising $803,000 through the first 45 days of the year — a fraction of O’Rourke’s $2.3 million for the same timeframe.
Just as a point of perspective, Rick Noriega raised $4.1 million over the entire two-year course of his 2008 Senate campaign. Beto beat that by over 50% in just this past quarter. That’s mind-boggling. I went back a little farther than that and found that Ron Kirk raised $9.5 million in the 2002 cycle. Not a bad total, but Beto was already at $8.7 million as of February. So yeah, that’s a lot of lettuce.
At this point, the main question I have is how does he plan to spend it? The main reason why Texas is considered such an expensive state to campaign in is that there are something like 27 media markets, so it costs a bunch of money to run sufficient TV advertising to cover the state. I’m sure O’Rourke will do some of that – his name ID is still modest, and one never wants to let one’s opponent get in the first word about who one is – but that kind of old-media strategy just doesn’t jibe with everything we know about Beto. I’m hoping a lot of that is being banked for field/GOTV activity.
FEC reports are due April 15, and should be generally viewable later this month. In the meantime, some campaigns like Beto’s are releasing their numbers to the press, and so we get stories like this.
Houston Democratic congressional hopeful Lizzie Pannill Fletcher has raised about $1.2 million for the 2018 midterm election ahead of the May 22 runoff with Democratic rival Laura Moser, Fletcher’s campaign reported Tuesday.
Moser’s fundraising totals were not immediately available Tuesday, although an aide said the campaign has surpassed the $1 million mark. As of February 14, the end of the last reporting period, she had raised almost $765,000.
[…]
Fletcher’s campaign said that about $350,000 of her total has come in since the March 6 primary, in which she was the top vote-getter in a field of seven candidates. Moser came in second, but forced a runoff by holding Fletcher below 50 percent.
Culberson has yet to report his latest fundraising totals. As of the last reporting period he had raised more than $1.1 million.
I’d say the presence of seven candidates in the race, four of whom were well-funded and drew significant support, ensured that no one would top fifty percent, but never mind that. Fletcher was at about $860K as of February 14; Moser as noted was at $765K. Like I said, we’ll know soon enough what everyone has, and I’ll do a report so you can see it.
Beto got some valuable free TV time tonight on CH13, with a “who is Beto O’Rourke” story. I wonder if Cruz gets equal time due to campaign laws?
I do have to hand it to Beto, though, he’s beating the pavement. I respect that, even though I disagree with most of his platform.
There hasn’t been a forced fairness doctrine since the Reagan appointed FCC eliminated it in the 80′. Some stations have there own voluntary policies, but most don’t. It was never applied to news as it would be unworkable if ever time you mentioned an incumbent President you had to give equal time to every Socialist or Libertarian. Also over the course of the next 9 months, as the incumbent, Cruz will have far more airtime the Beto.