The latest round of campaign finance disclosures are breaking records and revealing the shape of the 2023 election.
Before the latest round of campaign finance disclosure forms, former Governor Terry McAuliffe held the record for raising the most amount of campaign cash in a single quarter. Now Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin has almost doubled that. And the top-raising candidate for the General Assembly is Republican Appropriations Chairman Barry Knight.
Stephen Farnsworth at the University of Mary Washington says money often finds its way to power.
"People give money to politicians because they get their money's worth. If they didn't, they wouldn't give money to politicians going forward," Farnsworth explains. "And so, if you're going to give money to politics, you might as well give money to somebody who’s highly influential, and party leaders and key figures on key committees like Appropriations are in fact those players."
J. Miles Coleman at the UVA Center for Politics says he was struck by how much money is going to open seats rather than incumbents.
"The maps were drawn by our state Supreme Court, not by the politicians," Coleman says. "So, that's one layer of protection this year that maybe incumbent legislators may not have so it would stand to reason that candidates in open seats are taking up more of a chunk of that fundraising."
He says he's particularly interested in races where the incumbent is being out-raised by a challenger — Senator Amanda Chase is falling behind in the Republican primary in Chesterfield and Senator Joe Morrissey is falling behind in the Democratic primary in the Richmond suburbs.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
