Rep. Adam Schiff, censured by GOP-led House, raises $8.1 million for his California Senate race

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This article was published 05/07/2023 (918 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff’s Senate campaign said Wednesday that the California Democrat had raised $8.1 million over the past three months, a period that includes his recent censure by the Republican-led House.

His team said that was a record for a Senate campaign for the April-through-June quarter of a year in which an election is not taking place. The 2024 race is to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

However, federal records show that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s main campaign committee raised over $11 million in the second quarter of 2021, a year when he was not facing reelection.

Schiff’s campaign said in the announcement that the $8.1 million amount represented “the most any Senate campaign nationwide has raised in Q2 of an off-cycle year, ever.” Campaign communications director Marisol Samayoa said in an email the “record” amount referred to fundraising in open Senate contests, where an incumbent is not running. That was not made clear in the statement announcing Schiff had set a “record.”

“It would be accurate to say open” Senate contests, she wrote.

Schiff rose to national prominence as the lead prosecutor in then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial and has long been recognized as a prolific small-dollar fundraiser. His donations averaged $34 from 144,000 donors across the country, and 98% of the contributions were $200 or less, coming from every state and every county in California, according to the campaign.

It was not immediately clear how much of the three-month total came after or around the censure vote on June 21.

Schiff, first elected to Congress in 2000, represents parts of Hollywood and suburbs north of Los Angeles. He has been a frequent target of conservatives — Trump in particular — since the then-GOP-led House Intelligence Committee he served on started investigating Trump’s ties to Russia in the 2016 election.

Schiff was censured on a party-line vote for comments he made during the investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia. In and around the time of the censure vote, Schiff was a frequent presence in headlines and on TV. He made online fundraising pitches, including on the day of the vote when he urged supporters to “become a founding donor” of his Senate campaign.

He frequently used Trump as a foil, and in an online video, Schiff blamed Trump for helping engineer his censure. “We’ve already known that the GOP is completely unhinged and beholden to Donald Trump. Join me in fighting back,” Schiff wrote in one online appeal.

Overall, Schiff has nearly $30 million cash on hand for the 2024 race to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, his campaign said. The large field of Democratic candidates includes two House colleagues, Reps. Katie Porter and Barbara Lee.

Schiff’s figures have not yet been documented with the federal agency that oversees election fundraising. Those do not have to be submitted by campaigns until mid-July.

At the end of March, he led the Senate field in fundraising by a wide margin with nearly $25 million in the bank.