Kirk Winning the Money Race

Despite a difficult month, Rep. Mark Kirk has continued to keep his fundraising advantage over challenger Alexi Giannoulias.

Mark Kirk had an awful public relations month. It didn't do anything, however, to his fundraising operation. Kirk's campaign announced an enormous $2.3 million haul in the second quarter of 2010. It is Kirk's biggest take during any quarter thus far.  In short: his fundraising is getting stronger.

Mark Kirk's money advantage will play an important role if Kirk is going to win Barack Obama's old Senate seat. Last quarter, Kirk out-raised Giannoulias by $1 million, and the fact that Giannoulias' campaign chose not to announce its numbers probably suggest that they didn't match Kirk's total (although Giannoulias did break out all of the stops recently, with Joe Biden, Arne Duncan, and David Plouffe all hosting events designed to raise cash for Giannoulias). At the very least, it appears that Kirk maintained his fundraising advantage and there is good chance that he actually extended it.

Why is this so important? Two reasons. First, with the Blagojevich trial front page news in every single Illinois paper, the Kirk camp will be able to pounce on Giannoulias’ connections to both Blagojevich as well as to convicted felon, Tony Rezko with large ad buys. The campaign already brought out several new ads this week. Second, and possibly more importantly, the advantage will allow Kirk's camp to escalate now and force Giannoulias to spend more to keep up, so that he has less in the months leading up to the campaign.

Giannoulias is already going to spend more than he thought he would have to because Jessie Jackson Jr. has stayed out of the race. By not endorsing Giannoulias, Jackson denied the Democrat access to his formidable inner city political operation that would have allowed Giannoulias to more easily convince Chicago's urban black population to vote for him. Instead, Giannoulias will have to spend his own money to get those voters to turn out.  Without a huge Chicago turnout, Giannoulias won't have any chance of overcoming Kirk's advantage downstate.

While Giannoulias is busy spending money trying to turn out what should be voters in the Democratic base, Kirk can focus his time and money on winning independent voters across the state.

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