Kevin Cramer Ends First Quarter With Over Half A Million In His Campaign Coffers

Incumbent Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer ended 2013 with almost $300,000 in cash on hand and no announced challenger from Democrats. Now in April Cramer finally has a Democrat opponent – state Senator George Sinner – and he just filed his fundraising report for the first quarter of 2014 showing he has over $500,000 in the bank.

Sinner’s report hasn’t been posted by the FEC yet. I’ll post it when it is available.

Cramer raised over $269,000 during the reporting period, which ran from January 1st through March 31st, and spent $58,000.

So far in the 2014 election cycle Cramer has raised $458,260 from individuals and $272,500 from political action committees for a total of $730,760.

As a point of comparison, Cramer’s April quarterly in the 2012 election cycle showed the candidate raising $254,270.12 through the end of March with $198,892.39. Cramer would go on to defeat Democrat Pam Gulleson, who started her campaign in November as compared to Sinner who started in March, with 54.8 percent of the vote to Gulleson’s 41.7.

Incumbency does wonders for fundraising, though Cramer isn’t necessarily getting a windfall from Washington DC and other out of state sources. Most of his contributions are coming from North Dakotans.

Looking at Cramer’s $386,082 in itemized individual contributions ($72,178 worth of contributions were below the amount that requires reporting), just over $120,000 came from out of state while over $266,000 came from in state.

Meaning almost 70 percent of Cramer’s contributions came from North Dakotans.