As New Jersey’s tumultuous campaign for U.S. Senate at last comes to a close, Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) reported raising an enormous $2.4 million in Q3 of 2024 – the congressman’s second-largest fundraising quarter ever going back to his first House campaign in 2018.
Kim, who first launched his bid for the Senate against incumbent Bob Menendez last September and has since taken on New Jersey’s entire Democratic Party apparatus, has now raised more than $10 million for his Senate campaign in total. (He’s raised $11.4 million during the 2023-2024 cycle overall, but a little over $1 million of that came before the beginning of his Senate campaign, when he was still running for re-election to the House.)
As of September 30, Kim still had nearly $4 million on-hand to make closing arguments against his Republican foe, Curtis Bashaw.
“I stepped up to run for Senate because I felt the people of New Jersey needed a choice for a different kind of politics,” Kim said in a statement. “Quarter after quarter, we continue to see grassroots donations powering this campaign and I am incredibly grateful for the support that we continue to see from the people, not the well-off and well-connected, who are ready for a new era of leadership here in New Jersey.”
Kim also said he’s received over 141,000 donations since launching his Senate campaign, including more than 34,000 during the most recent fundraising quarter, 95% of which were $100 or less.
Bashaw has not yet released his own fundraising numbers from the 3rd quarter. As of this summer, Bashaw had raised $2.7 million for his campaign, much of which was self-funded.
It’s worth noting that Kim’s fundraising numbers, while impressive, are far lower than those of many other Democratic Senate candidates around the country. For example, two of Kim’s House colleagues who are also running Senate seats this cycle, Arizona’s Ruben Gallego and Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin, raised $22 million and $18 million during Q3, respectively.
Counterintuitively, though, that’s probably a good sign for Kim, not a bad one. The Senate playing field has solidified around a few core swing states that both parties have felt the need to pour money into, both via candidates themselves and via outside groups; New Jersey has very much been left off of that list of states, meaning that there has been less reason for Democratic donors and PACs to come to Kim’s aid.
Bashaw has tried to make the case that the race is indeed competitive, and released an internal poll in August showing Kim with a small 38%-33% lead. But neither party is acting like the contest is nearly that close, and Kim is considered the substantial favorite – especially if he uses much of the $4 million he still had on-hand at the beginning of the month to blanket the airwaves in the closing weeks of the election.