Democrat John Fetterman entered the summer stretch of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race with nearly five times the available cash that Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz had, according to campaign finance reports.
The two candidates for the open seat created by the retirement of Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Lehigh County, filed their second quarter reports on Saturday with the Federal Election Commission.
Fetterman reported ending June with about $5.5 million in cash, compared to $1.1 million for Oz.
Overall, Fetterman raised about $11 million over the second quarter months of April, May and June, which his campaign claimed was the most ever by a Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate in a single quarter.
Fetterman’s haul included raising $10 million across May and June. His campaign said that $8.3 million was collected after he won the May 17 primary.
Oz raised $640,000 in April and loaned his campaign $2.3 million, $1 million on April 11 and $1.3 million on April 28. At the end of the April, his campaign had $911,000 in available cash.
Of course, Oz had a highly competitive GOP primary race against former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick to get through in May, while Fetterman was comfortably ahead in the Democratic primary.
During May and June, Oz reported raising $1 million, and loaned his campaign $400,000 in May and $500,000 on June 29, a day before the end of the reporting period.
So far, Oz has pumped $14.2 million of his own money into his Senate campaign.
Fetterman’s campaign has raised about $26 million while Oz has raised $15.2 million. Those figures, however, do not take into account the many so-called “dark money” non-profit organization spending money on their preferred candidates.
Political analysts have said spending in the Fetterman-Oz race could exceed the $164 million record set by Toomey and Democrat Katie McGinty in 2016.
Fetterman’s campaign said its average donation was $29.87, reflecting its trumpeted grassroots nature.
During the second quarter, Fetterman received more than 358,000 donations from over 200,000 unique donors, and donations from more than 139,000 first-time donors.
The campaign said that means that 69 percent of Fetterman’s second-quarter contributors were new donors.
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