For completely unknown reasons, ex-Rep. Joe Sestak's campaign refused to share their second-quarter fundraising numbers, saying instead that they were "more focused on other benchmarks, such as volunteers passing out brochures at more than 100 Independence Day parades or fireworks displays." Fortunately, we were able to obtain a summary of Sestak's report from the FEC's press office (maddeningly, Senate campaigns still aren't required to file their data electronically), and it shows a better-than-expected but still so-so haul of $726,000, with $2.2 million in cash-on-hand.
It's certainly stronger than his weak $312,000 take in the first quarter, but by contrast, back in the same quarter in 2009, before Sestak was even a declared candidate for Senate, he raised over $1 million and had $4.3 million in the bank. And at the time, when Sestak was publicly weighing a bid, Sen. Arlen Specter had already switched to the Democratic Party, so he managed to raise an even larger sum even though he didn't have the field to himself as he does now—far from it, in fact, since Specter had the entire establishment behind him.
But Sestak may not be alone in the primary much longer. Both the DSCC and EMILY's List are trying to recruit Katie McGinty, Gov. Tom Wolf's chief of staff, and her former campaign manager from her failed gubernatorial bid last year says she'll decide "soon" (in the words of the Associated Press). But is McGinty, who finished fourth in the primary with just 8 percent, really a better option than Sestak for taking on well-financed GOP Sen. Pat Toomey?
Put another way, are Democratic power-brokers right that Sestak is running an amateurish operation and will let a winnable race slip through his fingers once again, just like he supposedly did in 2010? Or are they simply desperate for an alternative because they're still butthurt that Sestak beat their guy Specter last time, and are trying to spin his narrow 2-point loss to Toomey in the general as a botch job rather than an impressive achievement given the GOP wave?
It sort of feels like parts of both views are right: Sestak definitely did and continues to run his operations in an unorthodox-in-a-bad-way style, but to come so close to defeating Toomey in such a wretched Democratic year—Republicans won the open governor's race in 2010 by 9 points—has to count for something. And since Sestak definitely won't drop out of the race (there's a reason he's known as the Honey Badger of Pennsylvania politics), it's not just a question of whether McGinty is more electable, but whether it's worth risking a bruising primary, too. It's all out of our hands, though, so we'll just have to see.