Getting to the U.S. Senate and staying there requires an immense amount of money. Some senators are themselves wealthy and can inject millions into their campaigns at will, as California Sen. Dianne Feinstein did during the 2012 cycle. Others in Congress’s upper chamber have to raise an average of more than $10 million—the cost of winning a Senate seat in 2016, according to OpenSecrets—to keep their jobs, which is in and of itself a full-time job.
In general, Republican senators raise more than their Democratic counterparts (no one holds a candle to Florida’s Sen. Rick Scott, who has brought in $86 million in the last five years), but some Democrats have eye-popping fundraising totals of their own. A few of the Senate’s top fundraisers bring in tens of millions thanks to fundraising bases they’ve built up in their home states; others have leveraged nationwide fame into donations from progressives all over. Here’s how the top five Democratic fundraisers in the Senate have stocked their war chests since 2015, all data from OpenSecrets:
Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts)
The progressive icon is usually lauded by supporters for her plans and deep attention to policy detail. Less attention is paid to her skill at the grubbier aspects of campaigning, but she’s been an effective fundraiser for as long as she’s been a politician. Prior to swearing off big-money fundraisers as a 2020 presidential candidate, she collected checks from major donors on her home turf of Boston and elite enclaves from Silicon Valley to Martha’s Vineyard as she prepared for her 2018 reelection campaign. That Senate race was a walk for her, of course, so a lot of that money ended up going toward her presidential ambitions: She transferred $11 million to Warren for President, bought a combined $13 million in ads from Google and Facebook, and spent $14 million on a massive staff that supported her ultimately unsuccessful primary campaign. Overall, she's raised $36 million since 2015, more than any other Democrat.
Most of that money didn’t come from mega-donors, but from small donors—Warren got more cash from gifts of $200 to $499 than she did from gifts of more than $2,700; the majority of her funds came from donations under $200. Three-quarters of her donations came from states other than Massachusetts, which makes sense given her reputation: She’s a national figure not overly reliant on her home state.
Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin)
How do you skate to an easy 11-point 2018 Senate victory in Wisconsin, a state where Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016? Having around $30 million in cash sure helps. Baldwin, who has been in the Senate since 2013, clearly has a bond with voters in the swing state—“progressive but reasonable” is how Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen once described her, and she was at one time supposedly in the running for Biden’s VP slot. But she also has a bond with Wisconsin’s donors. From 2015 to 2020, she brought in $9.7 million in home-state donations, more than 40% of her total haul.
During the 2018 race, her campaign touted small online donations that helped her break Wisconsin fundraising records. But since 2015, a significant portion of that total—over $9.3 million—has come from donations of over $2,700. Baldwin has multiple income streams, and that’s how she’s raised such a huge amount of money despite being less famous than Warren.
Sherrod Brown (Ohio)
Like Baldwin, Brown found himself defending a seat in a state that had turned red in 2016 (though Ohio is more conservative than Wisconsin). Like Baldwin, Brown responded by breaking state fundraising records and was successfully reelected. Though millions flowed in from California, New York, and other liberal areas interested in keeping a Democrat in an Ohio Senate seat, the majority of his funding came from Ohio.
That makes sense, given Brown’s national profile. As an old-school progressive who focuses on labor and working-class issues, he’s never been glamorous or taken much of a turn in the spotlight. If people outside Ohio know him at all, it’s likely for his gravelly voice and habit of wearing rumpled suits. So no wonder out-of-state money hasn’t attached itself to him. Still, like most senators, he’s built his $28 million war chest mostly from large donations in the past five years, with donations under $200 only accounting for a quarter of his fundraising. His large donors tend to come from the most reliable sources of funds for Democrats: the education industry (particularly the University System of Ohio) and big law firms. He'll likely need every penny in 2024, the next time he's up for reelection.
Jacky Rosen (Nevada)
Rosen had no previous political experience when Harry Reid and the DCCC tapped her to run for the House in 2016; she served a single term in the lower house before running against Dean Heller, one of the most vulnerable Republican senators in the 2018 cycle. Her victory came in large part because of out-of-state donations—as of 2020, she has raised $6.6 million from California, $3.4 million from New York, and just $2.7 million from Nevada.
That isn’t indicative of any failure or weakness in home-state support on Rosen’s part; it just indicates how fired-up liberals around the country were to flip a Senate seat in a state that has been trending blue for years. Rosen may prove to be a fundraising dynamo in the future, but it seems just as likely that she was in the right place at the right time.
Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona)
Another right-place-right-time beneficiary, Sinema has raised $5 million in Arizona as of 2020 but still got 70% of her donations from other states as cash flowed into what was one of the closest Senate races of the year. Much of it came in the form of large, $2,700-plus donations, and her top contributors were national organizations like EMILY’s List and Democracy Engine.
Sinema’s donors are almost certainly not energized by her progressive issues stances, as donors to Warren are. She was a member of the Blue Dogs when she was in the House and has been as bipartisan as one can be in this day and age. (One sign of her moderate credentials: She’s said she doesn’t even support adding a public option as part of healthcare legislation.) This puts her in an odd category of politicians whose policy preferences may not be shared by a substantial chunk of her donors. But a win in a Senate race is a win, a Democrat is a Democrat, and Sinema will likely be getting as much out of state money as it takes to keep her in office in a purple state.
