Raking It In Craig Raises Nearly $1 Million For Re-Election
If money talks, U.S. Sen. Larry Craig thunders.
The incumbent Republican gathered $934,019 for his re-election campaign in 1995 and spent $453,168, according to campaign finance disclosure statements filed Wednesday with the Federal Elections Commission and the Idaho Secretary of State.
The semi-annual reports were supposed to be post-marked Wednesday, but not necessarily in the hands of elections officials.
A report for First District Republican U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth was not available from the secretary of state. Her office did not respond to a request for the information.
Dan Williams, the Boise lawyer who is challenging Chenoweth, likewise had not filed his paperwork as of Wednesday.
Craig’s fund-raising success means he has gathered more than $1 million for his push for another six years in the Senate.
That’s 10 times more money than Democratic challenger Walt Minnick reported raising in 1995.
Political action committees and political parties gave Craig $370,084 last year.
About half of Craig’s donations came from 7,870 individual contributors, which is a record for him.
He had a total of 5,624 individual contributors in the 1990 race.
Craig says the large number of individual donors is an overwhelming sign of the broad-based support for his campaign.
“These numbers greatly exceed what I expected,” he said in a prepared statement.
The Minnick camp says it shows only how sophisticated Craig is at raising money.
“It shows Mr. Craig has been in Congress for 16 years and he’s spent a lot of time collecting contributions and building a mailing list,” said Bill Broadhead, Minnick’s press secretary.
“The Minnick report is very strong given he hasn’t been a career politician and that he got in the race in the middle of the year.”
Minnick raised $233,261 and spent $101,169. Some 560 individuals gave $183,406. Minnick put in $49,205.
The rest of the money came from political parties.
None of the money has come from PACs. In fact, Minnick has challenged Craig to give up PAC dollars, which Craig refuses to do.
, DataTimes