Virginia Republican Tim Donner injected $100,000 into his U.S. Senate campaign and now has $215,000 of his own money riding on the race.
Donner’s third quarter haul totaled $133,241, putting him far behind GOP frontrunner and former Gov. George Allen, who brought in $900,000 in the last three months.
Donner, a wealthy executive for Horizons Television Inc., raised about $339,000 to date — most of it his own money — while Allen still has $1.8 million on hand.
Tea Party leader Jamie Radtke announced Friday she raised $116,000 between July 1 and Sept. 30 and about $370,000 since the start of the year.
David McCormick and Earl Jackson round out the Republican field.
Radtke and Donner are in a battle to find voters right of Allen. The two continue to paint Allen as a George Bush-era conservative who voted to increase spending while in the U.S. Senate and approved larger budgets as governor.
To defeat Allen, “there needs to be a single challenger, a single person who represents independents,” Donner said, and a handful of Tea Party candidates in the race would split a limited pool of money and, ultimately, votes in the Republican primary.
Obviously, Donner thinks he is that candidate.
“I’m really the only candidate in this race that hasn’t been involved in politics,” he said. “I think that has a great appeal to an awful lot of people.”
