Less than a week after reports of an ongoing coup attempt within the House Democratic Caucus, the midyear campaign finance reports were released. The news was not good for Toscano and company, despite VPAP’s best attempts to spin how great the Democratic freshmen are doing.
Speaker Cox alone raised over $1.1 million in the first six months of the year, beating Speaker Howell’s total for the same time period in 2016.
Think about that. Speaker Bill Howell was the most prolific legislative fundraiser in the history of the Commonwealth. Kirk Cox is already outperforming him, just six months into his speakership.
Toscano, on the other hand, mustered just $51,000 in his campaign account and $11,000 in his leadership PAC.
Bottom line? Speaker Kirk Cox and House Republicans crushed Toscano and House Democrats by almost every metric imaginable.
Here are the key points of an exclusive TRS analysis of the midyear reports:
>> Republicans have a massive cash advantage, with over $3.6 million cash on hand compared to $2.2 million for Democrats.
>> Subtracting leadership PACs, Republican members still have $2.9 million in the bank, compared to $1.8 million for Democrats.
>> Republican leadership PACs raised $1.1 million, compared to just over $800,000 for Democrats.
You can bet you won’t read any of this in the Richmond Times-Dispatch this week, because the math shows that Republicans are off to a strong start for the 2019 cycle.
