Virginia Senate hopeful raised more than $20K a day but still came up short
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Version 0 of 1. RICHMOND — Democrat Gary McCollum pulled in more contributions than any other candidate in the home stretch of this year’s Virginia Senate races, averaging $23,000 a day. The last-minute influx amounted to $808,000 in just over a month’s time, but it did not add up to victory on Election Day. He failed to unseat Sen. Frank Wagner (R-Virginia Beach), who raised $125,000 over the same period. Their race was among the hardest-fought Senate contests this year. Big money poured into those campaigns right up to and even after Election Day, according to newly filed campaign finance reports covering donations made between Oct. 23 and Nov. 26. [Virginia Senate candidate misrepresents military record] All 140 seats in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates were on the ballot in November, but most of the money and attention were on a handful of Senate seats that would determine control of Richmond’s upper chamber. Only six candidates for the 100-member House raised six figures in the last month, compared with 10 in the 40-seat Senate. Because the GOP dominates the House, flipping the Senate was the term-limited Democratic governor’s best hope for building a legislative legacy. Democrats could have taken control by picking up just one seat because of the tie-breaking authority of Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D). But in the end, Republicans held onto their 21-19 majority. McCollum began the race as one of the Democrats’ brightest hopes. The cable executive with a military background and an up-by-the-bootstraps biography was taking on an incumbent ranked as one of the legislature’s biggest recipients of corporate gifts. Then in September, McCollum’s campaign was hurt by revelations that he had misrepresented his military record. The controversy did not stop the flow of money to McCollum, although he supplied more than half of what he took in over the final month. His $808,000 haul included $494,000 in contributions and loans from the candidate himself, $135,000 from Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee, and $7,500 from billionaire environmentalist Thomas Steyer, according to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. [McAuliffe’s hopes for Senate majority dashed] Democrat Jeremy McPike had the second-biggest haul for the period, raising $746,000. The volunteer firefighter won the Northern Virginia seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William). About $428,000 of his contributions came from the Democratic Party of Virginia and $178,000 from McAuliffe’s Common Good VA PAC. McPike’s Republican opponent, Manassas Mayor Harry J. “Hal” Parrish II, took in $738,000 in the home stretch. Of that, $230,000 came from the campaign account of Sen. Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment (R-James City). Three other Senate candidates raised upward of $400,000 over the last month. Two of them were competing for the Richmond-area seat being vacated by retiring Sen. John Watkins (R-Powhatan): Republican Glen Sturtevant, who raised $496,000; and Democrat Dan Gecker, who raised $476,000. Sturtevant, a Richmond school board member and attorney, defeated Gecker, a Chesterfield County supervisor and developer. Jill McCabe, a pediatric emergency-room doctor, raised $419,000 in the final period — far more than the $59,000 pulled in by the incumbent she had hoped to unseat, Sen. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun). But Black, a former Marine combat pilot and lawyer who is among the Assembly’s most conservative members, prevailed. |