Pat Quinn released his fundraising numbers for the first half of 2010 today. It turns out he collected a surprisingly strong $5.1 million, with $2.3 million on hand at the end of June.
The people of Illinois realize how much is at stake in this election, said Ben Nuckels, Campaign Manager. Our contributions show voters know that Pat Quinn and Sheila Simon are the right leaders to keep growing our economy and bring jobs to the state.
The total released by the campaign does not include contributions made after June 30, such as the [Illinois Education Association]’s public commitment of a significant contribution during their endorsement last week.
Now here’s a Brady press release from last week, announcing his fundraising.
Brady for Illinois today announced it raised $3.6 million in campaign contributions through the first half of this year.
In a report to be filed by July 20 with the State Board of Elections for the reporting period January 1st to June 30th, the Brady campaign will report contributions from every one of the state’s 102 counties. The campaign received contributions from over 4,200 individual donors, 2,500 of which were donations under $100. Through June 30th, the campaign had approximately $2.3 million on hand.
It sounds as though Quinn and Brady have the same amount of money -- $2.3 million -- to beat each other up with during the last three-and-a-half months of the campaign. Right?
Not exactly. Both candidates are getting help from their respective governors’ associations, which can run nasty attack ads with those incriminating “I approved this message” tag at the end. So far, Brady has been getting far more help from the Republican Governors’ Association than Quinn has from the Democratic Governors’ Association. The reason for that? According to Politico, “the RGA holds a whopping $18 million cash on hand advantage, with $40 million in the bank, compared with the DGA’s $22 million.”
Politics
That’s why Brady was able to debut this ad in early June. It took over a month for the Democratic Governors’ Association to respond with an ad attacking Brady’s record on women’s rights.
So it’s good for Quinn that he has as much cash as Brady. But there’s another fundraising race going on outside Illinois, and he’s losing that one.
