Democratic Congressional candidate Doug Owens pulled in $125,000 in donations in the six weeks after he announced his campaign.
The Owens campaign says that money came from 268 individual donors, and shows Owens is serious about his bid for Congress.
Campaign coordinator Emily Hollingshead tells Utah Policy the campaign has about $111,000 in cash on hand right now, which is encouraging given how late Owens joined the race for Congress.
“We need to show we can be competitive,” says Hollingshead. “You can’t be competitive if you don’t have cash to run a campaign. Our plan over the next quarter is to bankroll as much cash as we can.”
Hollingshead says they’ve been able to attract a number of “moderate Republican” donors to their campaign like Clark Ivory.
“At this point, it’s difficult to say we are going to have the same amount of cash as our Republican opponent,” Hollingshead added. “We know what we’re up against. Hopefully we can show other groups that we are serious about this campaign.”
Hollingshead wouldn’t name a target number for their fundraising, but she concedes cash is the engine of the modern campaign.
“Looking at other Democratic races for Congress in Utah, they raised $126,000 for their entire campaign. This is the kind of race you could win with a million dollars, but we have a long way to go to get there.”
