Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes announced Tuesday she has broken a Kentucky fundraising record by hauling in more than $4 million from supporters over the past three months.
The latest tally means Grimes has also out raised Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell for the third straight quarter, this time by more than $1 million.
"Kentuckians are coming together to invest in our campaign because they recognize that Alison Lundergan Grimes will bring a new generation of leadership to the U.S. Senate," Grimes campaign manager Jonathan Hurst said in a release.
"As Mitch McConnell turns to his Washington special interest allies to bankroll his campaign, our grassroots campaign is driven by our supporters in all of Kentucky’s 120 counties."
Grimes' campaignhas a war chest of about $6.2 million going into the final four months of the election.Shehas raised around $11.3 million since entering the race to unseatMcConnell last summer.
According to Grimes' campaign, this most recent fundraising haul is the highest quarterly tally ever in a U.S. Senate race in Kentucky.
Hurst said their grassroots effort to defeat a 30-year-incumbent is backed by almost 84,000 individual donors with a median contribution of $25 each.
The announcement is another significant fundraising effort by Grimes, who has outpaced McConnell’s fundraising machine since entering the race.
McConnell began raising money for his re-election a full two years earlier and his re-election team raised $3.1 million during the same period. That brings McConnell's total for the cycle to a record-breaking $25 million raised.
"Senator McConnell has broken a Kentucky fundraising record and is well positioned to take a substantial cash advantage and a lead in the polls into this November's election," said campaign spokeswoman Allison Moore. "The unprecedented support from throughout the commonwealth and around the country for Senator McConnell's strong leadership is increasing every quarter."
Polls show the Kentucky Senate race is a dead heat and McConnell campaign aides were attempting to blunt the Grimes announcement early. Advisers close to the senator argued Tuesday morning the cash on hand yardstick should be more important in the final months of the race.
Moore told WFPL Grimes should have at least a cash parity given she had no Democratic primary challenger.
The McConnell campaign is well ahead of Grimes in terms of cash on hand with a solid $9.8 million going into the fall. It is slightly less than the just over $10 million war chest McConnell reportedly had three months ago, which continues a trend of the McConnell team burning through campaign cash at a rapid rate.
Grimes has shrunk the cash on hand gap by about 65 percent since jumping in last year.
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