Cheney Keeps Far Ahead of Rivals for Next Years House Primary
The Federal Election Commission recently released new data on where each candidate in next years Wyoming House of Representatives race stands money wise.
As with the previous FEC filings, Wyoming representative Liz Cheney continues to be far ahead of her competition in terms of total funds raised.
All told, Cheney's total funds currently sit at $3,418,128.64, while in second and third are state senator Anthony Bouchard and state representative Charles Gray, at $547,868.35 and $394,333.03 raised respectively.
In spite of the lower revenues raised by Bouchard and Gray compared to Cheney, it's worth looking at where everyone's money comes from to see where their support is.
For Cheney's itemized donations, a large percent of her funds comes from places like WinRed, a fundraising platform used by Republicans across the country, her previous campaign, or other political action committees, and only 107 of the 3,240 donations listed on the FEC website, or 3%, are from Wyoming.
For Bouchard's itemized donations, he has gotten almost no money from PACs, besides $500 from WinRed, and most of the donations he has received are smaller and a greater amount, 128 out 545, or 23% are from Wyoming.
Donations to Bouchard also did not seem to be impacted after it was reported in late May, and confirmed by the candidate, that he had impregnated a woman when she was 14 and he was 18, married her a year later, and divorced her three years after that.
In June, Bouchard reported around $30,000 in donations, while in May he received approximately $23,000.
Gray had a majority of his donations come from his own funds, with almost $300,000 of the $394,000 he raised contributed by himself.
Of the 72 itemized donations that aren't from Gray or his father, Jan Gray, almost 40% of them, 34 out of 89, are from Wyoming.
While Cheney may have the most money raised so far, money is not always the deciding factor in who will win a given race, however around 90% of the time, the candidate with more money tends to win.
Further down are two other candidates, Denton Knapp and Marissa Selvig, who to date have only raised $8,675 and $2,090 respectively.
This piece has been updated to specify itemized donations, and after publication of this piece, Gray contacted K2 Radio to clarify that combined with unitemized donations, over 900 donors have given to his campaign.