Former football star Herschel Walker raised $3.7 million for his Republican Senate campaign in Georgia since its launch five weeks ago.
The hefty haul shows that donors are backing Walker’s high-profile bid to take on Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who first won his seat in a special election last year and will have to run for a full term next year.
Walker, who is running with former President Trump’s endorsement, has largely refrained from holding events on the campaign trail, but the latest fundraising figures show that he has still been able to flex his financial muscle without extensive glad-handing with voters.
Walker’s campaign said in a statement that it had garnered funds from nearly 50,000 individual donors in all 50 states and that it is averaging $100,000 in donations per day.
“Though we only had 5 weeks to fundraise this quarter, tens of thousands of Georgians and patriots across the country stepped up to the plate to help us take back the United States Senate,” Walker said. “We are grateful for each and every cent and look forward to continuing to travel across this great state shaking hands with real Georgians and hearing about the issues facing their communities.”
Walker’s is the biggest fundraising report yet of any Republican looking to take on Warnock. No other Republican candidate has yet to announce their third-quarter haul, but many donors had held off on putting money into the race as they waited to see if Walker would take up Trump’s call to jump in the contest.
Former Navy SEAL Latham Saddler, state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black and military veteran Kelvin King are also running in the GOP primary.
Walker instantly took on front-runner status when he launched his campaign in late August, given his broad name recognition in Georgia and Trump’s endorsement. However, he’s faced brushback over past violent behavior.
Warnock has not yet said how much he raised in the third quarter but took in $7.2 million in the second quarter of the year.
Georgia has emerged as a top swing state after electing President Biden, Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) in the 2020 cycle after consistently voting Republican for decades. Biden was the first Democratic presidential contender to win the Peach State since 1992.