Simmons, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has more than $1.4 million on hand, according to a statement from his campaign manager Jim Barnett.<\/p>\n
“Our FEC report will show us with over $1.4 million cash on hand raised from nearly 14,000 donors, including nearly $550,000 raised this quarter – a very respectable sum considering the Senate campaign’s lower profile given Dodd’s departure, and the intense competition for money by so many Republican candidates for governor and Congress,” Barnett wrote in an email to reporters. <\/p>\n
“We have made significant investments this quarter as we approach the GOP convention — mail to prospective delegates, survey research and our field program. Most importantly, our cash on hand allows us to have a significant media presence approaching primary day, at which point McMahon will finally have to contend with a competing message on television, inevitably leading to a much tighter race.”<\/p>\n
The Simmons campaign will need every penny as it goes up against the enormously wealthy Linda McMahon, who is largely self-funding her Senate campaign. Barnett said McMahon, who has been running TV commercials for months, has already spent $14 million. <\/p>\n
The Simmons campaign has not gone on TV yet. Instead, it has invested its cash in mailings to Republican delegates, polls and establishing field operations.<\/p>\n
<\/font> <\/p>\n McMahon now leads in the latest Q poll, but Barnett said the contest is far from over.<\/p>\n “The bottom line is this remains an extremely fluid race,” Barnett said. “Near daily revelations about McMahon’s record at WWE continue to dog her campaign and it is likely that there are more shoes to drop. The more voters learn about McMahon, the more her negatives rise. Once we amplify our message with television advertising, expect a brand new ball game.”<\/span><\/p>\n Simmons fully expects to win the GOP nomination at next month’s convention, setting the stage for an August primary. His campaign clearly hopes the steady drip of news stories about McMahon’s tenure as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment turns into a torrent that ultimately sweeps away her candidacy.<\/span><\/p>\n “This past week alone produced no fewer than four groundbreaking and deeply troubling stories that threaten McMahon’s long-term viability – 1. lying on her BOE application; 2. spending millions on lobbyists, undercutting her “outsider” claims; 3. employing adult film stars and calling them “role models”; and, finally, the New London Day’s reporting on McMahon’s attempts to interfere in the federal criminal probe of the WWE’s steroid dealer,” Barnett wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n “Any one of these could be enough to severely undercut her candidacy. All of them together, on top of other damaging reports over the past several months, make her a fairly easy general election target for the Democrats. In the short term, this reality will be masked as she continues to have the airwaves to herself. But support earned in a vacuum is fragile because it is built on one-sided information. Once advertising dollars are spent taking our case to the voters it will be a new ballgame altogether.”<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span> <\/p>\n <\/span> <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Simmons, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has more than $1.4 million on hand, according to a statement from his campaign manager Jim Barnett. “Our FEC report will show us with over $1.4 million cash on hand raised from nearly 14,000 donors, including nearly $550,000 raised this quarter – a very respectable sum considering the Senate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4000"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}