By Michael R. Blood | Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff’s Senate campaign said Wednesday that the California Democrat had raised $8.1 million over the past three months, a period that includes his recent censure by the Republican-led House.
His team said that was a record for a Senate campaign for the April-through-June quarter of a year in which an election is not taking place. The 2024 race is to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
However, federal records show that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s main campaign committee raised over $11 million in the second quarter of 2021, a year when he was not facing reelection.
Schiff’s campaign said in the announcement that the $8.1 million amount represented “the most any Senate campaign nationwide has raised in Q2 of an off-cycle year, ever.” Campaign communications director Marisol Samayoa said in an email the “record” amount referred to fundraising in open Senate contests, where an incumbent is not running. That was not made clear in the statement announcing Schiff had set a “record.”
“It would be accurate to say open” Senate contests, she wrote.
Schiff rose to national prominence as the lead prosecutor in then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial and has long been recognized as a prolific small-dollar fundraiser. His donations averaged $34 from 144,000 donors across the country, and 98% of the contributions were $200 or less, coming from every state and every county in California, according to the campaign.
It was not immediately clear how much of the three-month total came after or around the censure vote on June 21.
Schiff, first elected to Congress in 2000, represents parts of Hollywood and suburbs north of Los Angeles. He has been a frequent target of conservatives — Trump in particular — since the then-GOP-led House Intelligence Committee he served on started investigating Trump’s ties to Russia in the 2016…
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