After a bumpy summer, former Sen. Russ Feingold is now leading the man who toppled him in 2010, Sen. Ron Johnson, in both the polls and the money chase in Wisconsin’s Senate race, one of the most closely watched in the country.
According to their campaigns, Feingold, who most recently served as special envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, will report raising $2.4 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30. Johnson, a former plastics manufacturer and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, raised $1.4 million in the third quarter.
Despite outraising Johnson, who never held public office before defeating Feingold, the Democrat trails slightly in cash on hand. Feingold will report a war chest of $3.4 million while Johnson will show he banked $3.5 million.
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The Federal Election Commission filing deadline for third quarter fundraising is midnight.
Feingold’s squeaky clean reputation and poll numbers took a dip over the summer when he dropped a long-held pledge to raise most of his campaign funds from inside the Badger State and reports surfaced that under his leadership, the Progressives United PAC he founded spent the bulk of what it raised on operations.
Nevertheless, in the most recent Marquette University Law School poll, Feingold jumped to a significant lead. He held a 14-point advantage over Johnson in the poll released Sept. 30 after leading Johnson by only 5 points in the school’s August poll.
In the September poll, Feingold enjoyed the support of 50 percent of registered voters to Johnson’s 36 percent. In the August survey, Feingold’s margin was just 47 percent to Johnson’s 42 percent.
“This race is just bouncing around,” poll director Charles Franklin said after revealing the results of the September survey.
