Democrat George Sinner Getting Nearly 50% Of Itemized Contributions From Out Of State

The July quarterlies have been filed with the FEC, and overall Rep. Kevin Cramer continues to hold a big lead over Democrat challenger George Sinner in North Dakota’s House race in terms of money raised and cash on hand. Sinner did beat Cramer in fundraising in the quarter though, but so far he’s taken nearly 50 percent of his campaign cash from out of state.

Here’s Sinner’s in-state vs out-of-state breakdown for his campaign to date (including only those individual contributions that are itemized, obviously).

A big reason for Sinner’s high out of state contribution percentage is his association with Act Blue, a left-wing clearing house for political contributions based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It appears as though Act Blue was matching many of the contributions to the Sinner campaign with several personal contributions from individuals duplicated – at times down to the cent – by a contribution from Act Blue.

Here’s Cramer’s break down, where we see that the incumbent is only getting about 25 percent of his cash from out of state:

In terms of fundraising to date, Cramer has a big advantage despite Sinner edging him in fundraising the last two quarters. You’ll note that Cramer is way above his fundraising from 2012 at this point in the cycle, whereas Sinner is way behind where Democrat House candidate Pam Gulleson was in 2012:

In terms of cash on hand, at the end of the reporting period Cramer had a more than 2-1 advantage over Sinner:

My sense of the campaign to this point is that Sinner seems to be mailing it in, while Cramer is on cruise control. Sinner was extremely late getting into the race – he didn’t announce until March, shortly before his party’s statewide convention, and months later in the cycle than Gulleson announced in 2012 – and he hasn’t done much since entering. The perception many have of Sinner’s campaign is that he’s a placeholder candidate. Someone Democrats put into the race so that Cramer wouldn’t run unopposed, but who few see as having a real chance of winning.

Judging by the way Sinner has been conducting his campaign so far, it seems he believes that too.

You can read Sinner’s full report here, and Cramer’s full report here.

Update: For what it’s worth, Libertarian Party House candidate Jack Seaman filed his first report in the last quarter. He has raised about $5,500 so far. You can read his full report here.