Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Marco Rubio announced today he collected $340,000 in contributions during the second quarter. More than 40 percent of that total came from online contributions. Rubio said he received a donation from each of the 50 states.

A quick note on that total: it’s more than the $255,000 he raised in the exploratory phase of his campaign in the first quarter, but less than the $363,000 that Democrat Dan Gelber raised for his U.S. Senate campaign during the first three months of the year. Gelber, who was in the state legislative session for a month of that time, was competing for dollars against U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek. Meek reported $1.5 million during the same time and Gelber later stepped away from the race and is now running for state attorney general. (Meek told us last night he’ll report about $1.2 million for the second quarter)

Of course, Rubio is running against a popular sitting governor, which makes his task considerably more difficult. Rubio clearly understands this and is insisting he won’t shy away from the race despite the financial pounding he is about to absorb from Republican Gov. Charlie Crist. Crist is expected to bring in at least $3 million for the second quarter.

From Rubio’s e-mail to supporters this afternoon:

“We are also well on our way to unleashing the enormous potential of our passionate and committed donors, over 96 percent of which have the continued ability to support my campaign repeatedly, consistently and quarter after quarter.

“This is a strong statement about the direction you believe our Republican Party, our state and our nation should take. It is an encouraging reminder about how piece by piece, supporter by supporter and idea by idea, we are building a movement that will only grow and gain momentum as we continue on this path.”

Tags: campaign finance, fund-raising, Marco Rubio, Republican primary, Republicans

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 at 12:53 pm and is filed under 2010 campaigns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.