Schumer, Tim Scott lead as Senate fundraising pace heats up

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) raised more than $11.5 million between April and June as he builds a mammoth $27 million war chest in advance of his bid for a fifth term in office, a haul that surpassed every other senator over the last three months.

But the silver medal goes to an unexpected new star in the Senate Republican Conference: Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). 

Scott, running for his second term next year, raised $9.6 million — almost $3 million more than he raised and spent in the entire 2014 election cycle, when he won a full term after being appointed to fill a vacancy after his predecessor, Jim DeMint, quit to run the Heritage Foundation. 

Scott is unlikely to face a significant Democratic challenge six years after he captured 61 percent of the vote, and in a state that former President Trump carried by 12 points in 2020. So his massive haul — and the $14.4 million left in his bank account at the end of June — is likely to set off more speculation that Scott is considering a run for the White House in 2024. 

Quarterly filings made in the last several days with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show a pair of first-term Senate Democrats who must run for reelection next year are also raising significant funds as they prepare to seek full terms in office. 

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) pulled in almost $7.2 million in the last three months and ended with $10.5 million in the bank.  

Warnock, who won office by just over 2 percentage points in one of the two the January runoff elections in Georgia that handed Democrats control of the Senate, faces what is likely to be a crowded set of Republican challengers battling among themselves for the right to take him on next year. 

Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black (R) is the only prominent candidate to have announced his campaign, though he did so recently enough that he has not yet had to file papers with the FEC. Several others — Reps. Buddy Carter (R) and Drew Ferguson (R), state Sen. Burt Jones (R), House Speaker David Ralston (R) and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R), whom Warnock beat in 2022 — have all considered adding their names to the ballot also.

But the field is frozen by Trump, whom many Republicans blame for losing the seat in the first place. Trump has openly pushed former NFL running back Herschel Walker, a Texas resident who was a standout at the University of Georgia, to run for the seat. 

In Arizona, Sen. Mark Kelly (D) has continued his torrid fundraising pace, pulling in $6 million in the last quarter. Kelly has just under $7.6 million in the bank about eight months after beating then-Sen. Martha McSally (R) by a 2.4 percentage point margin. 

Kelly will face the winner of a crowded Republican primary field dominated by candidates vying for Trump’s attention. Energy executive Jim Lamon (R) has run television advertisements in the New Jersey media market that covers Trump’s Bedminster golf course, while retired state Adjutant Gen. Mick McGuire (R), Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) and venture capitalist Blake Masters (R) vie for attention.

McGuire and Lamon both reported raising about $225,000 from donors in the past three months, though both kicked in money of their own. McGuire loaned his campaign $200,000, while Lamon loaned himself 10 times that amount. Masters only recently announced his campaign, though a supportive super PAC has been seeded with $10 million from his friend and boss Peter Thiel, the tech venture capitalist. 

Brnovich entered the race last month. He will report just under $400,000 on hand, after raising $437,000 in the first days of his campaign.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) stood out among senators up for reelection this year, pulling in just over $4 million in the last three months. He ended June with almost $6.3 million in the bank. 

But his most prominent rival, Rep. Val Demings (D), is quickly catching up. Demings, the former Orlando police chief before winning a seat in Congress, raised just under $4.7 million between April and June, to finish with almost $3.1 million in the bank. That haul made Demings the nonincumbent who raised the most money in the last three months, without counting loans to a candidate’s own campaign. 

Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) each raised more than $3 million in the last month, though Hassan is likely to face a much more difficult race for reelection in a swing state than Kennedy will in ruby-red Louisiana. 

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) continues to consider running against Hassan, though the incumbent has stockpiled a $6.5 million bank account.

Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Todd Young (R-Ind.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) all raised more than $2 million in the last quarter. 

Duckworth, Young, Paul and Murray are unlikely to face serious challenges in states that are moving more toward their parties in recent years. Padilla’s most significant challenge may come from a fellow Democrat, after he was appointed to fill the seat left vacant by Vice President Harris. 

Cortez Masto may become a Republican target as former Attorney General Adam Laxalt (R) considers a comeback bid after he lost a run for governor in 2018.

Among nonincumbents running for Senate seats next year, Katie Britt (R), a former aide to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), stands out: She raised more than $2.2 million in just the first three weeks of her race to replace her former boss in Alabama.

But she faces twin challenges as she seeks to introduce herself to voters: One rival, Rep. Mo Brooks (R), is a weak fundraiser — he hauled in only $824,000 in the last quarter and has $1.7 million on hand — but he enjoys Trump’s support. Another, former Ambassador Lynda Blanchard (R), is all too willing to open her own checkbook; she has $5.2 million in the bank, much of it from her own coffers.

Two candidates running for the retiring Sen. Richard Burr’s (R-N.C.) seat raised about $1.2 million last month, hauls that lead their respective races. 

Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) raised more than Rep. Ted Budd (R), who won Trump’s endorsement last month, though Budd has more in the bank. And former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley (D) raised more than former state Sen. Jeff Jackson (D), who pulled in $719,000, and former state Sen. Erica Smith (D), who raised $113,000. Jackson narrowly led Beasley in the amount of cash he held in reserve.

No candidate running for an open seat raised more than Mike Gibbons, an investment banker who reported raising $6.2 million in the race to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). But more than 90 percent of that money came from Gibbons himself, in the form of a nearly $5.7 million loan to his nascent campaign. 

Another businessman running to replace Portman, Bernie Moreno, hauled in $2.25 million, none of which came from the candidate himself. That put Moreno ahead of former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Jane Timken, who raised $1.1 million, and former state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R), who reported raising $975,000, among the rest of the Ohio Republican field. 

On the Democratic side, Rep. Tim Ryan, the odds-on favorite to win his party’s nomination, is building a bank account set to rival his eventual Republican foe. Ryan raised $3.1 million in the last three months, well over twice the amount he raised for his short-lived presidential campaign in 2016. He ended June with $2.57 million on hand.

In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) continues his prodigious fundraising, hauling in $2.5 million in the last three months. He ended the period with more than $3 million in the bank, though that figure suggests his campaign has spent substantially to raise the money he has.  

Two rivals — Montgomery County Commission Chairwoman Val Arkoosh (D) and real estate developer Jeff Bartos (R), who ran for lieutenant governor against Fetterman in 2018 — each raised just more than $1 million in the race to replace retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R). Arkoosh finished June with $632,000 in the bank, while Bartos kept $1.85 million on hand.