Indianz.Com > News > Cronkite News: Three major candidates in running for U.S. Senate seat in Arizona
Sinema’s lackluster fundraising quarter raises eyebrows over campaign hopes
Monday, February 5, 2024
Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema raised a fraction of what her leading challengers brought in in the last quarter of 2023, raising new questions about her chances in what could be a bruising, three-way race.
Sinema still had more than $10 million in her campaign account as of December 31, the most of any of the announced candidates in the race, according to numbers posted Thursday by the Federal Election Commission.
But the FEC said she raised less than $600,000 in the last quarter, compared to $3.3 million for Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, and $2.1 million for GOP hopeful Kari Lake in the same period.
And Sinema, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, will also have to collect significantly more signatures to get on the ballot than either Lake or Gallego, who will compete in primaries for established parties. Sinema will need at least 42,303 signatures, to 7,072 for Lake and 6,556 for Gallego.
Sinema, whose Senate office did not respond to requests for comment Thursday, has not yet officially said she will run – another factor that gives analysts pause.
“Reading between the tea leaves, this looks like something where she kind of looked at reelection but it hit her in the face that that’s not going to happen,” said J. Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. He said lackluster fundraising by incumbents facing reelection is “often a telltale sign that retirement is on their mind.”
“She is really the ‘will she, won’t she’ of the Senate landscape,” Coleman said. “I think this helped to clear this up.”
Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News. It is published via a Creative Commons license. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
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