The money is flooding into the Massachusetts Senate race. Former White House financial reform adviser Elizabeth Warren, who is challenging Republican incumbent Sen. Scott Brown, has raised $5.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2011.
From the Warren campaign’s press release:
“From all across our commonwealth, people are supporting our campaign and the fight to level the playing field for middle class families,” said consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren. “With Wall Street lining up against this campaign, already contributing millions and willing to pay any price to try to stop our work, it’s going to take a strong, grassroots effort like this to win.”
The Elizabeth for Massachusetts campaign currently has more than $6 million cash on hand, compared to Senator Scott Brown’s $12.8 million war chest. The momentum of Elizabeth’s grassroots support over the fourth quarter enabled the campaign to purchase $1.6 million in television advertisements in December.
The quarterly figure is far ahead of Brown’s $3.2 million in the same quarter. However, thanks to Brown’s head-start on the cycle, ever since his victory in a January 2010 special election, he has a very high cash-on-hand figure of $12.8 million — a two-to-one advantage over Warren.
Warren’s cash-on-hand figure was not immediately available. In Warren’s Federal Election Commission filings for the third quarter — the period when she first got into the race — she had raised $3.2 million, and had $3 million cash on hand. Thus, she still lags behind Brown on this figure, but with her rapid fundraising it is does seem plausible that she could catch up.
Recent polling has shown Warren with the lead in the race. Brown was elected to the Senate in a special election in January 2010, following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, in a stunning upset against Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley. However, a major challenge for him going into 2012 is that he is a Republican senator in a deep-blue state, which is expected to vote Democratic by a wide margin in the presidential race.
The fourth-quarter figure was first reported by the Boston Globe.
