Updated at 4 p.m.
Campaign finance reports reveal that U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy is not raising money at the same pace one might expect if he’s going to run for reelection next year.
The 81-year-old Vermont Democrat is expected to announce in the coming months whether he will seek a ninth term.
Meanwhile, a potential successor to Leahy, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., is accelerating his fundraising.
Leahy is the fifth-longest-serving senator in history.
If he retires, he would open up a Vermont seat in Congress for the first time in 16 years.
Leahy’s wife, Marcelle, 79, began treatment in May for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a blood and marrow cancer. She said in a statement that her prognosis is “extremely encouraging,” but the news raised questions about whether Leahy would retire, given that his wife has played such a prominent role in his public life.
Leahy himself was briefly hospitalized in January for what his office later called “muscle spasms.”
Carolyn Dwyer, Leahy’s campaign manager, said in a statement on Friday afternoon that the campaign is “working to make sure Senator Leahy has the resources necessary to run a successful campaign.”
“Senator Leahy’s focus has been on helping Vermonters address the pandemic. As a result of his efforts, Vermont has seen an unprecedented flow of federal dollars to make once in a generation investments,” she said, pointing to his efforts supporting an infrastructure bill that she said “will make transformational investments in Vermont’s future and the health and prosperity of every Vermonter.”
In an email to VTDigger in May, Leahy spokesperson David Carle said the senator and his wife “have a long-held policy of making reelection decisions a year out from the election, and that hasn’t changed.”
Leahy is not raising nearly as much money as he did six years ago, when he was last up for reelection.
In the second quarter of this year, Leahy raised nearly $430,000, according to campaign finance reports filed Thursday, considerably less than the $777,000 he raised in the second quarter of 2015, a year before his last reelection contest.
Leahy still has a hefty sum of nearly $2 million in his campaign account, reporting $1,959,524.
If Leahy retires, he would leave a power vacuum for Vermont in the U.S. Senate. He currently is chairman of the Appropriations Committee, which controls spending.
On the other hand, Welch raised $129,466 in the second quarter, more than twice what he raised in the second quarter of 2019, a year before his last reelection, when he received about $61,000 in campaign contributions.
The numbers reflect contributions raised by the candidates’ campaign committees.
In addition, Leahy’s Green Mountain Political Action Committee raised $77,505 in the second quarter. So far this year, the PAC raised $139,000, well ahead of the $100,577 it raised in the first six months of 2015.
