Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) ramped up his fundraising pace in the third quarter of the year, bringing in $6 million as he gears up for his 2022 reelection bid.
The $6 million haul is an improvement over the roughly $4 million he raised in the second quarter when his main Democratic rival, Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), beat him out by nearly $700,000. He’s now slated to enter the last stretch of 2021 with about $9.6 million in cash on hand.
So far this year, Rubio has raised nearly $12 million for his reelection bid. His latest fundraising total was first reported by Fox News.
Rubio’s Senate seat is among a handful that Democrats are hoping to flip next year in their bid to keep and or expand their razor-thin majority in the upper chamber. While the party’s nominating contest is still in its infancy, Demings has emerged as the early favorite to challenge Rubio in 2022.
Despite its reputation as a perennial battleground, however, Florida has proven an elusive target for Democrats in recent years. The 2018 midterm elections saw Democrats lose their hold on one of the state’s Senate seats, while simultaneously falling in the governor’s race to now-Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Things have only gotten more difficult from there. Former President Trump carried Florida for a second time in 2020, beating President Biden there by a more than 3-point margin — a relative landslide by Sunshine State standards.
But Florida remains far from a shoe-in for Republicans. For one thing, it’s astonishingly expensive to run a statewide campaign there, given its 10 media markets, vast size and large, diverse population. And Demings has proven to be a formidable fundraiser in her own right.