Democrat Sara Gideon raised far more than Maine’s incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins in the first quarter of 2020, as campaigns around the country have had to readjust their fundraising strategies because of the Coronavirus-induced social distancing measures in place. In the period ending March 31, Gideon — who still has to win a Democratic Senate primary for an official general election spot but has national party backing — raised a full $7.1 million, which was “nearly three times the $2.4 million in total receipts that went to Collins,” CNN reports. Gideon has occasionally led Collins in the sparse polling that’s been conducted, and the Cook Political Report currently calls the race a toss-up.
Collins has faced tough scrutiny for using her “moderate” self-identification as a cover to go along with the president on a number of key issues. She voted in favor of his U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who’d been revealed as an apparent sexual abuser during his confirmation hearings, and she voted in favor of his infamous 2017 big business-benefiting tax reform plan and his acquittal at the end of his recent impeachment trial.
She has held the seat since the 1990s, but public opinion of her has soured in the wake of these developments. The startlingly low figure of just 37 percent of Maine residents said that they approved of the job she’s doing in a recent poll. In that same poll, a full 52 percent of respondents said that they disapproved of Collins’s job performance, none of which exactly bodes well for her re-election chances.
In total, Democrats would need to secure up to four additional Senate seats to win the chamber majority post-November (the total drops to three if the vice president is a Democrat, since that office can break Senate ties). In every single one of the four Senate races that the Cook Political Report currently calls a toss-up, the leading Democratic contender had significantly higher fundraising in the first quarter of 2020 than their opponents.
In Arizona, Mark Kelly, who’s the husband of the state’s former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and has advocated alongside his wife for gun safety since a shooting attack on her, raised a full $11 million. His challenger, the incumbent Republican Martha McSally, only raised almost $6.4 million. The lead extends to the respective campaigns’ amounts of cash on hand, too — Kelly finished the first quarter with $19.7 million in his campaign accounts, while McSally had just nearly $10.3 million on hand.
The other two toss-up races in which Democrats led in fundraising in the first quarter were in North Carolina and Colorado. Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper raised about $4 million in the first quarter of 2020 for his Senate bid, compared to just $2.5 million raised by his opponent, incumbent Republican Cory Gardner, although Gardner did have more cash on hand. The incumbent had nearly $9.6 million in campaign accounts, while Hickenlooper had $4.9 million. The same pattern repeated in North Carolina; Democratic Senate nominee Cal Cunningham “raised nearly $4.4 million between January and March — far outpacing Republican Sen. Thom Tillis,” CNN explains, but Tillis had more cash on hand at the end of the quarter. Tillis had $6.5 million while Cunningham had $3 million.
