[A]fter Tuesday’s primary, the major party gubernatorial candidates are down to two, but Gov. Phil Scott continues to out fundraise Christine Hallquist by a large margin, according to the latest campaign finance disclosure forms.
Though Scott is still far off his fundraising pace from 2016, he continues at a steady pace, raising just over $100,000 since last campaign finance filing and just under $315,000 overall.
“We’re in a good place with three months to go. We’ll continue to raise the funds needed in order to win in November,” Brittney Wilson, Scott’s campaign manager, said in a statement.
However, the Scott camp has made significant expenditures since July, spending more than $86,000 on a range of campaign needs from corporate consulting to transportation. This includes $27,000 for the services of Optimus Consulting, a data strategy group that works for center-right political campaigns and advocacy groups, during the latter half of July.
Wilson would not go into specifics about what Optimus Consulting was paid to do other than to “develop data and analytics.”
The latest filings show that the bulk of Scott’s donations have come from Vermont residents, but some of the larger donations have come from outside the state. For example, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a Boston based company; Purdue Pharma, the company that makes the opioid Oxycontin; and L Squared Holdings, an investment company, all gave the governor $1,000 or more.
Purdue Pharma has been the focus of multiple reports, lawsuits, and part of an investigation by a US House committee that suggests that the company was instrumental in the spread of the opioid crisis after years of branding Oxycontin as a safe way to combat pain.
Wilson said that pharmaceutical companies have aggravated the opioid crisis, but “these pharmaceutical manufacturers — who make a wide range of medicines — have accepted that they, along with prescribers, need to be part of the solution” and Purdue and others “are supporting candidates who are taking prevention, treatment and enforcement seriously.”
Last month’s filing showed that many of Scott’s larger donations came from corporations including Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto, Vermont-based GW Plastics, and pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s political action committee.
Hallquist, who earlier this month vowed to return the corporate donations she had received and to not accept any more, has raised almost $40,000 since mid July and $172,000 in total, well behind Scott’s efforts.
The Hallquist campaign also spent $50,000 since last filing and has spent almost $159,000 to date.
The filing shows the Hallquist campaign followed through on its promise, returning the $16,000 it received in corporate donations. The companies that received refunds from the campaign included Vermont Telephone Company Inc, Green Mountain Animal LLC, and Barrett M Singer Company, a real estate agency based in Palm Beach Florida.
Hallquist’s donations ranged from $5 to $4,000 during this campaign period and all of them came from private citizens, the majority of whom live in Vermont.
Cameron Russell, Hallquist’s campaign manager, could not be reached for comment after the campaign finance disclosure filings last night.
In an earlier interview with VTDigger, the Hallquist campaign said donations are spiking since her win on Tuesday evening.
In the 12 hours after it was announced that Hallquist had won the Democratic nomination, Russell said the campaign had received about $6000 in small donations.
The Hallquist campaign knows it has a difficult task to raise enough money to match Scott’s fundraising and PAC support, but Russell said money isn’t going to make or break their victory.
“I really don’t think it’s going to be as simple as total money raised. I think we can win regardless,” Russell said.
