So, maybe you remember a few weeks ago when I was emailing you almost constantly about our big end-of-quarter deadline.
Well, my and my opponent’s numbers have officially been posted for the public to see, and I’m pretty pleased with where we ended up.
Over this last quarter, my GOP opponent has raised $294,000 from 181 contributions (i.e. from actual donors, rather than money he loaned himself). Meanwhile, we raised about $417,000 from 1,925 contributions.
You heard that right: not only did we raise one-and-a-half times the amount my opponent did, but we also have more than ten times the number of donations.
The numbers don’t lie—the grassroots are with this campaign. Our message is overwhelmingly motivating everyday folks like you, and it’s showing up in both the amount we raised and the number of people who’ve given. Meanwhile, my opponent isn’t putting in the work and you can see from his report that he’s mostly coasting on large contributions from Senate Republicans and his rich friends.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
Because the other thing the report shows is that my opponent loaned himself about $250,000 during this last quarter. That brings him to a total of a million dollars he’s loaned himself across this race, and we have every reason to believe he’ll continue handing himself whatever he thinks he needs to win.
Even if we have the momentum, even if we have far and away more support on the ground, money is money. It all spends exactly the same whether you raise it through hard work like we did or just cut yourself a check like my opponent did.
And the end result is that, despite our hard work, right now Brad Briner is going into the next four months with about twice as much cash in his campaign account as I do.
Make no mistake: he’s building a warchest so that he can blanket the airwaves this Fall. He’s getting ready to try and attack us, drown us out, and do whatever he thinks he needs to in order to win. We know he can loan himself functionally unlimited money.
We need to be ready.
We can’t afford to let up for even a moment. If we want to be able to meet him and the NCGOP toe-to-toe, get our message out there, and combat his attacks and misinformation, we’re going to have to keep outworking him.
Which is why I need to keep asking you to step up and support this campaign—because when it comes to fundraising, we’re going to have to work twice as hard to get half as far. There are just sixteen weeks left until election day, and it needs to be all hands on deck from here to November. Keeping up our momentum and having a sustainable, predictable amount coming in week over week is going to be critical.
