The Wendy Davis campaign is pleased with the latest six-month campaign finance report showing the Democratic candidate for governor was able to gather more campaign funds during that period than her likely opponent the 2014 governor’s race, Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott.
Davis’ campaign raised almost a million dollars more than Abbott -- $12.2 million to Abbott’s $11.5 million.
Matt Angle with The Lone Star Project, a left-leaning political action committee, said that is a significant showing.
"It does show more than confidence as a candidate, it shows real momentum at a level of enthusiasm for her that you just haven’t," Angle said.
Angle points to the over 70,000 individual donors that contributed over the last six months as evidence of that enthusiasm, but understands that the fight is not over -- Davis still lags behind Abbott's $27 million in total funding.
Professor Jim Henson with the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project said Davis will be able to use this recent success, but the Abbott campaign still has a lot of momentum.
"For Wendy Davis this is a success, it will help her to raise more money, but she is going to have to keep it up and they still have some catching up to do," Henson said.
He said that while this is a small loss for the Abbott campaign, overall they have more than the Davis campaign and will be able to use the recent campaign finance reports to earn even more.
"In the event that Wendy Davis starts to raise significant amounts of money, that fact will become part of the fundraising appeal and the tactics used by the attorney general’s campaign to raise still more money," Henson said. "You know Republicans in the state just have deeper pockets."
Henson said Davis will need to collect about $35 million to $40 million before the general election. He said in the next three to four months the campaigns will start airing their political ads, which cost a lot of money to out maneuver an opponent. Henson said right now it isn't a chess match Davis could win.
