The Democrat Seeking to Unseat Lindsey Graham Just Smashed Fundraising Records

Jaime Harrison’s Senate campaign raised a staggering $57 million last quarter.

South Carolina's Jaime HarrisonMeg Kinnard/AP

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South Carolina Democrat Jaime Harrison raised a staggering $57 million in the third quarter of this year—more than any senate campaign has raised in a single quarter in US history.

Harrison seeks to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In recent weeks, Graham has led the effort to swear in Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, despite previous claims that he wouldn’t support filling a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year. 

Harrison is the first credible challenger in some time to Graham, who is seeking a a fourth term in the Senate. Polls show the election in South Carolina to be extremely competitive: Some show Graham having a slight edge, while others show the candidates neck and neck. Last week, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted its prediction from “lean Republican” to “tossup,” calling Harrison “perhaps Democrats’ best recruit and a fundraising behemoth.” 

Harrison has so far massively outraised and outspent Graham, pouring $52 million into a TV and digital advertising blitz compared to Graham’s $19 million. Harrison’s third quarter total, most of which came from out-of-state donors, is more than double what Sen. Graham raised in the previous six quarters combined, notes the New York Times.

But the fundraising numbers don’t mean Harrison is a shoo-in: After all, the previous quarterly senate fundraising record of $38 million was set by Texas’s Beto O’Rourke in 2018, who ultimately lost to Sen. Ted Cruz.   

As my colleague Kara Voght noted in her deep dive about the South Carolina election, Harrison’s biggest hurdle was originally lack of name recognition. He’s taken the advice of former Georgia guberatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: “Stacey’s advice to me was, ‘Jaime, you gotta go everywhere. You can’t give up on anybody,’” Harrison said.

“I think [the Democratic spirit] is alive and well all across the South. The real question is getting people to believe that it’s possible here,” he went on. “People have a little sliver of hope, and now it’s important for me to take that sliver and turn it into a roaring flame.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

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