Fundraising: Due to the complexities of federal campaign finance law, fundraising reports filed by candidates can sometimes be a bit opaque without meaning to be. An important example surfaced this past quarter, stemming from a fundraiser last month organized by Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton to help a dozen fellow veterans running for the House as Democrats. All of the beneficiaries collectively raised money from supporters into a special vehicle called the Serve America Victory Fund, and after the event, the proceeds were split just about equally between all candidates, netting them an average of $45,000 each.
However, this sum didn't get folded into the line item that reflects normal contributions campaigns receive from donors, which is the first number you see in the "3Q Raised" column in our big quarterly fundraising chart. Rather, each campaign, in its own quarterly report, listed their take as a "transfer" from another committee, which it in fact was.
Transfers aren't terribly common: Less than 10 percent of the candidates appearing on our third-quarter chart reported a material one. They also typically involve transfers of money from an old fundraising committee to a new one, so they don't usually reflect current fundraising strength. (You can find all transfers in the last column of this spreadsheet.) For instance, Colorado Republican Darryl Glenn somehow had $233,000 left over from his failed Senate campaign last year that he just shifted to an account for his current bid for the House—old wine in a new bottle, as it were.
That's not always the case, though, as the Serve America fundraiser shows. This was money these campaigns humped to raise themselves, and did so very recently. As such, it's reasonable to view these particular transfers as part of each campaign's traditional fundraising totals. Thus, someone like Jason Crow, who is running in Colorado's 6th Congressional District, really raised $219,000 for the quarter: $174,000 directly to his own committee, and another $45,000 via the Moulton event. The same is true for all of the other candidates involved in the fundraiser, a full list of which you can find here.