Republican candidate for Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District Kendall Qualls has outraised incumbent Dean Phillips (DFL-MN-03) once again. According to the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) July pre-primary reports released last Thursday, Qualls accumulated significantly more campaign contributions and cash-on-hand than Phillips.
In total, Qualls raised over $106,000 more than Phillips, and has about $68,000 more cash-on-hand. Representative Phillips’s $250,000 debt from his previous campaign was also listed on the report.
Qualls’s media team issued a press release the following day, which was later reposted by the Republican-endorsed candidate to Twitter and Facebook.
“I am exceptionally grateful to every one of the thousands of contributors to our campaign and am energized to see enthusiasm and interest growing each day, evidenced by our increased fundraising advantage,” said Qualls in his site’s press release. “We don’t have Hollywood donors and Bloomberg’s millions like Dean has at his disposal, so we are continuing our grassroots efforts with tremendous appeal.”
In a previous report, Qualls had just over $15,000 more cash-on-hand than the incumbent.
Qualls’s campaign manager, Thomas Knecht, said in the press release that this fundraising reflects the widespread support of their campaign.
“In spite of Dean pulling out all the stops, including help from Senator and former presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, the Qualls campaign once again generated more grassroots support than the incumbent. We’ve laid the foundation for us to do even better in the rest of the third quarter.”
Representative Phillips issued no official reaction to Quall’s report. Instead, the first-term incumbent issued a press release of his own about his role in leading the House Ethics Committee in reprimanding a GOP member for failing to report campaign funds.
Up until Phillips’ election in 2018, Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District had been held by Republicans since 1960. Though the Cook Partisan Voting Index give the progressive DFL Party a slim margin at D+1, no polling reflecting voter preference has been published.
Voters head to the polls Tuesday, August 11 to pick their Party’s nominee.
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Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Minnesota Sun and the Star News Network. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Dean Phillips” by Dean Phillips.
