Senate Democratic candidates are ready to rumble in the last five weeks of the election cycle as third quarter fundraising numbers are in. Dems have the money to compete as John Fetterman and Raphael Warnock are showing, but Dems also have a big advantage across the board in races like Wisconsin.
Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes raised more than $20 million in the third quarter of 2022, according to details from the Wisconsin lieutenant governor’s campaign, dwarfing what he raised throughout his entire bid for Senate.
Barnes is aiming to unseat Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent who is seeking a third term, in what has become one of the most closely watched Senate campaigns of the midterms. With an evenly divided Senate, every race this November could tilt the balance of power in the legislative body, but Barnes’ race against Johnson represents one of the best chances for Democrats to flip a Senate seat this cycle.
The race has been tight for months. A Marquette University Law School Poll, released in mid-September, found 49% of likely voters in Wisconsin supported Johnson, compared to 48% who backed Barnes – a statistical dead heat. But the poll was an improvement for Johnson: The same poll had found Barnes at 52% in August with the incumbent at 45%.
Barnes’ fundraising haul should help Democrats level the advertising playing field in the race after being outspent in September.
In Nevada, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has raised more than $15 million for her tight race last quarter.
With just weeks left before Election Day, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto will report raising more than $15 million between the beginning of July and the end of September leaving roughly $5 million cash on hand, her campaign announced Monday — another record in a record-breaking fundraising election cycle for Cortez Masto, and roughly double the $7.5 million she raised in the second quarter of 2022.
In a statement, her campaign touted individual donations from more than 170,000 contributors in the third quarter, with an average donation amount of $44. Her campaign did not immediately release quarterly spending figures, numbers that will likely remain unavailable until a federal filing deadline on Oct. 15.
It comes as Nevada’s U.S. Senate contest between Cortez Masto and her Republican opponent, former Attorney General Adam Laxalt, has become one of just a handful nationwide that could decide control of a U.S. Senate split 50-50 between the two major parties.
Cortez Masto, like many major Democratic candidates nationwide, has dominated the candidate-side fundraising race, raising more than three times as much as Laxalt — $30.1 million to $7.3 million, respectively — through the second quarter of 2022, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
As of Monday morning, Laxalt had yet to publicly announce his third-quarter fundraising. In the second quarter, he raised a little more than $2.8 million, less than half of Cortez Masto’s total.
In North Carolina, Democratic candidate Cheri Beasley raised more than $16 million in Q3 and has a real shot at retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr's seat.
So given Democrats’ struggles to win federal races in the state, let’s run through a couple reasons why Beasley could be the first federal candidate in almost 15 years to win a statewide race — and why she could be yet another Democrat to narrowly lose a Senate race in North Carolina.
For starters, Beasley, who already has experience running and winning a statewide race in North Carolina, has so far maintained a significant financial edge over Budd. Her impressive fundraising skills have allowed her to spend over $10 million on TV ads, according to The Cook Political Report, which cited data from AdImpact. That’s in contrast to nearly $2 million from Budd, according to the outlet.
Beasley is also hoping that the state’s demographics will work in her favor. She hasn’t been shy in admitting that she hopes she can gin up support among Black voters, who make up about 22 percent of the citizen voting-age population. And if Beasley wins, she’d become the state’s first Black U.S. senator.
“The Democratic Party has been trying hard to put forward candidates who reflect the diversity of the country,” said Whitney Manzo, a professor of political science at North Carolina’s Meredith College. “And I think the party is banking on [Beasley] appealing to voters of color, with the hope that she will energize voters in the same way that Barack Obama did in 2008.”
The increased salience of abortion access following the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization might also give Beasley a lift — something that other Democrats in competitive states are similarly hoping for.
Democrat Tim Ryan’s campaign reported raising $17.2 million in the third quarter — nearly doubling what was raised in the prior quarter and once again breaking a fundraising record for a U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio.
The Howland resident previously had set the record for most money in a quarter between April and June with $9,133,487 and before that, had the old record with $4,111,765 in the year’s first quarter.
Ryan, a 10-term congressman, is facing Republican J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” in the general election. Most polls have the race as a statistical tie.
The $17.2 million between July and September is almost as much as the $21,773,132 Ryan raised for the entire campaign before the third quarter.
The $17.2 million includes 105,455 new donors in the third quarter, according to his campaign, and more than 95 percent of the donations were $100 or less. The average online donation was $39.57, the campaign stated.
Ryan is spending money almost as fast as he is raising it with much of it going toward advertising.
His campaign said he had just over $1.5 million in his campaign fund as of Sept. 30, the last day of the third quarter filing period.
Ryan ended the second quarter on June 30 with $3,567,175 in his campaign fund.
If Dems fail to keep the Senate, it's not because they didn't spend money on their campaign ads targeting the GOP. They are ready to go.
They just need us.
Vote like your country depends on it.
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