The third quarter fundraising numbers came out last week, and they’re great. In what can only be called amazing, Keith Fimian destroyed Gerry Connolly in fundraising, raising almost two and a half times as much as Connolly did in the same time period.
Fimian raked in $1,023,694 in the 3rd quarter, one of the largest hauls for Republicans across the country. Connolly, an incumbent, career politician with fingers in pies all across Fairfax and Northern Virginia, managed to raise a meager $417,750.
If you dig down into the numbers, a lot more good things become readily apparent. First, 95% of all of Fimians contributions come from individuals. That kind of individual fundraising makes a big difference come election day. In terms of total fundraising, both have raised over $2 million for the entire cycle, with Fimian only trailing Connolly in total fundraising by $2500 – and Connolly had a head start in fundraising.
As everyone who has been watching TV lately in the 11th has seen, Connolly has been dumping money into his ridiculous “bonus” TV ad – he better hope that his ad is having some kind of an impact on the race because he’s been up for 10 days on broadcast TV (which is hugely expensive) and three weeks of cable. That kind of spending is going to be unsustainable for him down the road, especially when he’s not raising any money.
Fimian should be up on TV this week, and you’ve probably already seen the American Action Network’s ad with the school kids weighed down with debt over the weekend football games – they did a $1 million ad buy against Connolly and the results are starting to show.
Connolly better pray that he actually made an impact with those ads because Fimian and our independent efforts are going to blanket the airwaves until election day and he’s going to have a hard time responding.
I’ve always been confident that we were going to win this seat back from the Democrats, but this fundraising support confirms what we’ve all been hearing – Republicans have the momentum and I’m looking forward with each passing day to November 2.
