Amy McGrath’s Campaign Says It Raised $2.5 Million in One Day

Her race against Mitch McConnell will be among the country’s most expensive.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In the first 24 hours after launching her campaign to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), Kentucky Democrat Amy McGrath raised more than $2.5 million dollars, according to her campaign. 

McGrath—a retired Marine fighter pilot who narrowly lost her 2018 campaign against Republican Rep. Andy Barr in Kentucky’s 6th congressional district—announced her Senate bid Tuesday morning with a video casting McConnell as the man responsible for turning Washington, DC, into “something we all despise.” As of Wednesday morning, the video had been viewed more than 100,000 times. McGrath’s campaign manager, Mark Nickolas, told NBC News that this is the most money ever raised in the first 24 hours of a Senate campaign. 

All of that money came in from online donations, with an average donation of $36.15, according to Nickolas. That’s certainly a lot, but as NBC points out, this is sure to be an expensive Senate race: 

McGrath’s race against McConnell promises to be one of the most expensive Senate races of the 2020 election cycle. McConnell, as the Senate majority leader, has a formidable fundraising machine—in 2014, he raised and spent over $30 million in his race against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes. 

In response to McGrath’s video, McConnell’s campaign fired back with its own video, painting his new opponent as a far-left progressive in line with Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In an interview yesterday with MSNBC’s Morning Joe, McGrath, who has the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), called herself a “moderate” and said that her husband is a registered Republican.  

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate