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1Q fundraising roundup

The Congressional fundraising numbers are in, and in the Senate race, Senator Arlen Specter is the winner. He raised $1.3 million on his way to a total of $6.7 million in his campaign coffers. However, he is not the biggest surprise of the quarter.

Although Allyson Schwartz (D-13) pulled in a strong as usual fundraising haul ($379k), bringing her total to $2.1 million and Patrick Murphy (D-8)  has a low total of $252,000 in the bank, neither of them are the big surprise of the quarter.

The surprise of the 2009 year so far is Rep. Joe Sestak (D-7). He hauled in around $550,000, bringing his total to more than $3, 3 million. This is shocking, considering he is a second-term member of Congress who has already equaled Pennsylvania’s version of Terry McAuliffe, Democrat Joe Torsella, for a potential run at Arlen Specter. The other good news for Sestak is that the recent rise in piracy has gained him a lot of media attention, being a former Vice Admiral in the Navy.

Pat Toomey, who just announced for Senate within the last couple days, not surprisingly has no numbers in yet. In his last race vs. Specter, he brought in about $4.5 million, and I can only expect these numbers to rise with more national donors probably attracted to an anti-Specter campaign. Finally, Peg Luksik brought in a mediocre $10,735 haul, but having been successful as a third-party candidate with limited resources in the past, I’m sure this isn’t necessarily a bad quarter by her standards.

In the Congressional races, we haven’t seen much movement. Congressman Jim Gerlach (R-6), who has a gubernatorial exploratory committee, raised just over $150,000 for his Congressional Campaigns. In the only other major shocker, Bill Russell outraised John Murtha, by about $110,000. On the other hand, Murtha doesn’t need money to pay for name recognition.

The Democratic Senate numbers have prompted me to keep and eye on the Virginia Governor’s race, in which a big money Democrat (McAuliffe) and two smaller number State Legislators (Deighs and Moran) are facing off. This looks awfully like a state Representative Josh Shapiro (D-153) vs. Torsella primary, which is a real possibility on the Democratic side. To see all the fundraising data,  see here.

Specter’s numbers don’t appear to be up on the FEC page yet, and state numbers can be found here.

April 21, 2009 at 10:13 am

--Daniel Livingston

Tags: Add new tag, Allyson Schwartz, Arlen Specter, Joe Sestak, Joe Torsella, Josh Shapiro, Pat Toomey, Patrick Murphy

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