Rep. Mia Love is off to a blazing start in her fundraising for next year’s election, pulling in more than $432,000 in the just completed filing period.
Love tallied $432,649 in donations in the last quarter, bringing her year-to-date donations to more $763,385. However, Love also spent massive amounts of cash in the last quarter as well. Her operating expenditures were $408,912, which is nearly as much as she took in donations.
Love’s campaign manager, Dave Hansen, explains that the big spending is mostly due to fundraising costs. Love’s campaign spent about $266,000 on direct mail.
“The first six months after an election are your worst for fundraising,” said Hansen. “Our expenses were higher than normal because we were experimenting with our lists and testing some things. We knew we were not going to have a good take on it.”
Love’s campaign traditionally spends a lot of money on fundraising, building donor lists that they can keep coming back to time and again to bolster her bottom line.
“We can make a lot of money because of the uniqueness of Mia,” says Hansen. She can use direct mail while Reps. Rob Bishop and Chris Stewart can’t do that. Most of our success is the list of donors we’ve built up over the years. Her fundraising costs are going to be higher, but her income will be higher as well.”
Despite the extra spending this time, Love still has a massive cash advantage over the three Democrats who have already declared their intention to challenge Love next year. Love has $347,829 in the bank.
- Democrat Darlene McDonald pulled in $31,800 in donations, including an $8,000 loan and another $4,480 donation to her own campaign McDonald has $13,534 on hand.
- Democrat Marla Mott-Smith got $18,025 in donations, which includes a $10,000 loan to her own campaign. She has $11,232 in her account.
- Democrat Tom Taylor has $68,05 in donations, with $5,385 on hand.
In the last two election cycles, Love’s seat was targeted by the national Democratic Party and was considered a swing seat by many national pundits. So far this year, CD4 is rated as solidly in the Republican column.
