Democrat Mark Kelly raises nearly $6.3 million for Arizona Senate bid in fourth quarter of 2019

Former astronaut Mark Kelly raised nearly $6.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 for his bid to unseat Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), his campaign said on Tuesday.

The haul — his best of 2019 — brings his fundraising total for the year to more than $20 million. Kelly, a Democrat, ended the year with $13.6 million in cash on hand, his campaign said.

“This campaign took off like a rocket at the beginning of last year and hasn’t slowed down, and neither have the grassroots donors that are powering Mark’s Mission for Arizona — they know that Mark will take his experience as a combat pilot, astronaut, and engineer to fight for issues that matter to our state,” Jen Cox, Kelly’s campaign manager, said in a statement.

Over the course of the year, Kelly received contributions from more than 200,000 individual donors with an average donation size of $43, his campaign said.

McSally, who was appointed to fill the seat of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2018, is considered among the most vulnerable senators up for reelection in 2020. It will be her second Senate bid in two years; she lost a 2018 race to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). 

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, currently rates the 2020 Arizona Senate race as a tossup. 

McSally’s campaign announced on Tuesday that it had raised more than $4 million in the fourth quarter of 2019 – its best fundraising period of the year, but one that still fell short of Kelly’s total.

Kelly consistently outpaced McSally in 2019. In the third quarter of the year, for example, Kelly raised $5.6 million, while McSally raked in just more than $3 million. The quarter before that, he brought in $4.2 million to McSally’s $3.4 million.