Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown’s campaign announced yesterday that it raised $5 million in the three months of April, May, and June. This very large amount was $3.6 million less than the $8.6 million the Elizabeth Warren campaign raised during the same time period.
Brown, the Republican who stunned the nation with his January 2010 upset victory to take the Senate seat held by Democrat Edward Kennedy for more than four decades, still maintains an advantage in cash on hand, with $15.5 million in the bank, as opposed to Warren’s $13.5 million.
The extraordinary amount of money raised and spent on this critical Massachusetts Senate race is likely to increase over the next four months, as Democrats and Republicans in Massachusetts and around the country vie to win this key seat that may determine the balance of power in the Senate.
An analysis of available Federal Election Commission filings indicates that Warren’s fundraising advantage comes entirely from out-of-state. The Brown campaign stated that two-thirds of its donors in this second quarter report come from Massachusetts. An analysis of itemized contributors (those who gave over $200) to both campaigns conducted by the Associated Press of first quarter 2012 reports filed with the Federal Election Commission showed that 58% of Brown’s total itemized contributions came from Massachusetts, while only 43% of Warren’s contributions came from within the state. An analysis of all contributions made since the inception of the Warren campaign by Breitbart News found that the contrast was even more stark–only 36% of her itemized contributions received prior to the filing of this second quarter report came from Massachusetts.
The second quarter fundraising results reported by both campaigns this past week will not be available for public review until next Monday, when they will be posted online by the Federal Election Commission. If trends identified in previous filings continued during the second quarter, Brown and Warren probably raised about the same amount of money from residents of Massachusetts during the months of April, May, and June–around $3 million. Brown probably raised about $1.7 million from out-of-state residents, while Warren probably raised in excess of $5 million from out-of-state residents.
While Warren’s out-of-state fundraising prowess will help her fuel high levels of spending on television advertising, it also creates significant political problems. An analysis of the residential addresses of itemized contributors to her campaign from its inception to the end of the first quarter of 2012 indicated that almost all of them lived in the very wealthy “1% upper class” super-zipcodes of Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
Brown is sure to argue that Warren, the self proclaimed “champion of the 99%” is apparently running not to represent the interest of the citizens of Massachusetts, but instead to represent the national interests of the “1% upper class” who live in the country’s wealthiest neighborhoods in five urban areas beyond the borders of the state.
Michael Patrick Leahy is a Breitbart News contributor, Editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series, and author of Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement.