First fundraising reports for U.S. Senate, CD2 candidates

Candidate filing has concluded, and at the same time the first campaign fundraising reports are available for some of the leading candidates for federal office. In this post, I'm going to briefly cover the fundraising figures for the GOP U.S. Senate and U.S. House candidates that have filed their first quarter reports.

These are just the Republican candidates, and only those who filed first quarter reports (the rest have either not filed a committee with the FEC yet, or filed after the close of the quarter). On the Democratic side, only former Congresswoman Kendra Horn (in the open Senate race) has any substantial amount of fundraising (about $370k on hand), and she has no primary.

Most of the candidates pad their fundraising reports with personal loans (i.e. "Candidate X raised $500k" - when most of it was actually a personal loan), so I'm going to break the contributions out into two columns: donations (individuals+PACs) and candidate loans. I will also list what they've spent, and the amount of cash they have on hand.

U.S. Senate, full term (currently held by Sen. James Lankford):

Neither of these two candidates loaned their campaigns any money. With Lankford as an incumbent, and Lahmeyer having been on the campaign trail for about a year, I included their campaign to-date figures in addition to the first quarter sums.

Lahmeyer has a pretty unsustainable burn rate (he's spending his cash about as fast as he raises it). Lankford's spending includes the past five years, so take that with a grain of salt; still, he's raising a bunch of money, and has plenty of cash to drown out his challenger with.

U.S. Senate, special election (being vacated by Sen. Jim Inhofe):

Markwayne Mullin loaned his campaign a cool million dollars, and raised $373k (which I was actually underwhelmed by), plus he transfered over his House campaign cash, giving him the heftiest cash on hand figure. 

Luke Holland, banking on his boss Jim Inhofe's connections, raised $620k and loaned himself $200k. T.W. Shannon raised $245k and tossed in a loan of $150k, while Alex Gray kept close pace by raising $132k and loaning his campaign $200k. Nathan Dahm brings up the back of the pack with $146k raised (which is still nothing to sneeze at) and a $7,500 loan.

U.S. House, District 2 (Rep. Markwayne Mullin seeking the open Senate seat):

Chris Schiller has raised the most money ($257k), and loaned himself the most money ($250k). He appears to have the most out-of-state donors; his report is filled with contributions from pharmacists as far away as Idaho and Georgia (Schiller is a pharmacist).

Marty Quinn and Dustin Roberts come in second and third in donations ($106k and $83k, respectively), with the smallest personal loans ($27k and $25k). Johnny Teehee raised $42k and loaned $210k, and Avery Frix raised the smallest ($15k) while loaning his campaign $200k. 

Every time I see candidates giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to their campaigns, I just have to think... what I could do with that sort of dough...