GOP Senate candidate Mark Lamb makes lackluster fundraising debut. Can he compete?

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Lamb collected about $608,000 in his first three months as a candidate, a sum that may not keep Kari Lake from entering the race or persuade GOP leaders in Washington they have a top-tier fundraiser.

Lamb pulled in about a fifth of the $3.1 million that Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego said he raised in the same span. Both men are the most prominent challengers for the seat held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who has not yet filed her totals for April, May and June.

Lamb’s relatively modest fundraising debut seems unlikely to quell concerns among Republicans in Washington and Arizona who are looking to see if the Pinal County sheriff can demonstrate a readiness to ward off other GOP challengers and win a potential three-way race.

His campaign was not immediately available Friday for comment.

Overall, Lamb raised $608,000 from all sources. That included $5,000 from Lamb and another $5,000 from his wife, Janel, a day before the fundraising deadline.

His campaign spent 45% of what it raised to start its operations, and he ended the period with $335,000 in cash available. Of that, more than $66,000 is earmarked for the general election, effectively reducing his cash total for now.

Lamb’s campaign paid his wife about $4,800 for consulting expenses and mileage.

Among Lamb's donors, he took in $500 from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., $2,000 from a political action committee affiliated with Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and $6,600, the legal limit for a primary and general election, from former Republican Senate candidate Jim Lamon.

For the moment, Lamb is the only prominent Republican in the race. He has long been a popular presence on conservative television, usually toeing a hard line on battling illicit drugs and illegal immigration, but the report filed Friday is the first measure of his financial viability on a statewide level.

Lake, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in 2022 who is mentioned as a possible running mate with former President Donald Trump, has publicly acknowledged she is weighing a Senate run. She is widely viewed as the frontrunner for the nomination if she runs, but she continues to sue to overturn her loss last year, act as a prominent surrogate for Trump and tout a recently published book.

She could enter the Senate race this fall.

Sinema has filed preliminary paperwork needed to seek reelection but hasn’t officially said she is seeking a second six-year term. She has yet to file her fundraising figures for the quarter, which must be reported by late Saturday.

If she does run, it would set up a historic, three-way race with no clear precedent. While Republicans still outnumber Democrats in Arizona in registration and voter turnout, the prospects of a Lamb or Lake nomination have not stirred Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a cycle when Republicans are favored to win back the chamber.

McConnell repeatedly has identified Senate races in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio as the key contests for Republican gains, with Nevada and Wisconsin as second-order priorities.

Arizona’s exclusion is notable from a man who once backed then-Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., even before she formally announced she was running for the Senate.

Campaign fundraising: Ruben Gallego's Senate campaign brings in $3.1 million, largely from small-dollar donors

“We’ll be involved in any primary where that seems to be necessary to get a high-quality candidate, and we’ll be involved in every general election where we have a legitimate shot of winning — regardless of the philosophy of the nominee,” McConnell told CNN in May.

McConnell’s allies prominently withheld financial support from Blake Masters, Arizona’s 2022 Senate nominee for Republicans. They did so after private polling showed Masters was historically unpopular.

With relatively little support from his own donors or those who support Republicans, Masters wound up losing by nearly 5 percentage points to Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. Kelly’s campaign directly outraised Masters’ nearly 6 to 1.

Republicans had a lock on Senate races in Arizona for decades, winning nine straight campaigns between 1992 through 2016. Since Sinema’s election in 2018 as a Democrat, that party has now won three straight races.

It’s the longest elective drought for Republicans in Senate races in Arizona since Democrats won 10 straight between 1922 and 1950.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sheriff Mark Lamb raised $608,000 for his Senate bid