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As Alabama’s November elections near, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Katie Britt has accumulated almost $9 million in campaign fund contributions.
Since defeating incumbent Sen. Mo Brooks in June, Britt received an additional $605,500 in donations to her campaign, putting her most recent total at contributions at $8.7 million. Taking total receipts into account, Britt has raised $8.9 million, coming in about $65 shy of $9 million.
With a combination of name recognition, a heavily Republican base of supporters and ample funding, Britt is uniquely positioned to enter Congress as a freshman senator with money leftover in her account, said Jess Brown, a retired professor of political science.
Brown said most freshman senators spend “every penny they’ve got” by the time they win their seat, but Britt may not need to spend as much.
“She has the luxury of starting a term of office with a ready-made campaign war chest for reelection,” Brown said. “That inevitably will give her, if she chooses to exercise, some political flexibility that a lot of first term incumbents – they don’t have.”
Currently, Britt has more than $1 million left available to spend with less than two months til the general election.
AL.com’s most recent report on Britt’s campaign funding was in February, when she had about $5 million in contributions.
Her current contributions put her 31st in funding nationally out of 316 candidates running for a U.S. Senate seat who raised money this cycle, and 8th in funding out of the women running, according to federal records.
Britt raised the second-most money of any U.S. Senate candidate from Alabama this cycle, coming in behind Republican Michael Durant, who raised more than $10 million, but lost the primary election.
Britt will face Democratic Senate nominee Will Boyd on November 8.
According to the most recent data available, Boyd has gathered $54,315 in campaign funds, though the Federal Election Commission last updated his totals on June 30. Britt’s most recent update was Sept. 7.
In addition to a more than $8 million lead over Boyd, Britt has the advantage of a consistently red state. In this year’s primary, out of the 851,684 votes cast, 660,789 were Republican, totaling about 77.5%. According to data from the Secretary of State’s office, Republicans have steadily led most elections in the last decade, regardless of voter turnout levels.
In the 2020 election, Democrat nominee for Senate Doug Jones raised more than $31 million, but Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville took 60.2% of the vote and won the seat, despite having only $9.6 million in funding.
“I think she’d win if she had $1.29 in her account,” Brown said of Britt.
Tuberville’s last report from the FEC showed that he had a little over $173,000 left on hand when he entered the Senate.
According to the FEC, Britt earned more than $6.1 million from individual contributions in Alabama, but received financial support from 37 states across the U.S.
Sarah Swetlik is a gender and politics reporter at AL.com. She is supported through a partnership with Report for America. Contribute to support the team here.
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