Murray Raises Funds At Record Clip Her $601,000 Re-Election Fund Surpasses Pace Of Gorton’s $5.1 Million Total In 1994

Anticipating one of the country’s toughest re-election races in 1998, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., raised more than $601,000 during the first half of this year.

Murray is raking in dollars at a faster clip than GOP Sen. Slade Gorton at a comparable stage of his 1994 re-election campaign. Gorton spent $5.1 million, the state’s record for a candidate for public office.

Murray, who began raising money last year, had a cash-on-hand balance of $686,055 as of June 30, according to figures prepared for the Federal Election Commission.

In 1993, Gorton raised $474,950 in the first half of the year; after expenses, he reported $443,070 in the bank.

Murray spent $1.3 million to win election to the Senate in 1992, a bargain-basement campaign in today’s age of multimillion-dollar congressional races.

Even in sparsely populated Alaska, Republican Sen. Ted Stevens raised $3.2 million to win re-election last year.

But with campaign costs rapidly escalating, Murray has anticipated spending as much as $4 million to hold on to her seat next year. In 1996, five incumbent Republican House members in Washington spent more than $1 million apiece on their campaigns.

Murray is outpacing her one announced GOP challenger, Rep. Linda Smith. Smith has raised about $250,000 so far this year in a campaign that refuses to take contributions from corporate political action committees.

Both Murray and Smith have, however, courted small donors with direct mailings. Smith said Friday that 6,900 people have given to her campaign so far this year.

Murray reports more than 6,700 individual donors. The senator said that 75 percent of her money has come from individual donors and about 25 percent from PACs.

“I have worked hard to earn the trust and respect of the people I represent, and I am grateful they are willing to continue to invest in me and the issues I am working on,” Murray said Friday.

Smith also voiced delight, and took a swipe at establishment Republicans who have been trying to lure another GOP candidate into the Senate race. “You can’t find a broader coalition than I have,” she said.

Incumbent senators are known to concentrate on heavy fund raising the year before they are up for re-election. A hefty war chest is considered one of the major ways of persuading strong potential challengers to stay out of the race.

In Georgia, for instance, Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell has put together a campaign kitty estimated at almost $2 million. Several of the state’s prominent Democrats already have announced they will not challenge Coverdell.

Murray’s cash-on-hand balance is more modest than such colleagues as Coverdell, New York’s GOP Sen. Al D’Amato and California’s Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.

The political committee of Senate Majority leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., raised more than $1.4 million through the first six months of 1997.

Murray has used a variety of methods to collect campaign cash. The senator has held two PACdominated Washington, D.C., fund raisers, ignoring a challenge by Smith to forgo such contributions.

She was the object of a national fund-raising appeal by Emily’s List, a leading women’s political committee. And first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton headlined a Murray luncheon in Seattle last month.

Smith’s anti-PAC stand has attracted an adversary in her own party - Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, chairman of the Republicans’ Senate campaign committee. McConnell has refused to meet with Smith and recently sought to recruit state GOP Chairman Dale Foreman to run against her in next year’s GOP primary.

But Smith said she recently has talked to GOP Sens. John McCain of Arizona and John Ashcroft of Missouri and argued that Republican senators should help her campaign.

“It looks to me like McConnell is flying solo,” she joked.