U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Wednesday he raised $2 million for his 2018 re-election campaign in the last quarter, bringing his total cash on hand to $5.1 million.
Murphy said the amount he has raised since the beginning of the year is about half what he raised in the entirety of his first campaign in 2012. He raised about $3 million in the first quarter of 2017.
“I’ve never seen anything like the passion on the ground in Connecticut right now,” Murphy said. “Everywhere I go in the state, people tell me they are deeply worried about the direction Congress is taking the country.”
While the campaign’s quarterly filing is not yet available on the Federal Election Commission website, Murphy said 93 percent of the nearly 90,000 contributions he has received this year have been for $100 or less.
Murphy has spent most of the year without an opponent on the Republican side, but drew his first GOP challenger late last month.
Dominic Rapini, a Branford businessman who works as senior account executive in Apple’s consumer retail group, said Wednesday his campaign’s fundraising “has not begun in earnest yet.” He plans to ramp up his efforts in the coming weeks, but said raising millions of dollars is not always an indicator of whether a campaign will succeed or fail.
“I’m not daunted by his money,” Rapini said.
Rapini said he expects his report will show a “marginal” amount of funds raised in the last quarter.