Senate Race & Outside Money

The Allentown Morning Call has an article this morning about all the out of state money that's been contributed to the two U.S. Senate candidates. That shouldn't be a surprise as this is clearly a national race. Everyone expected money to pour in from all over the country for both candidates. In fact I expected to see more than this. Perhaps the large lead Casey took early on dissuaded many donors from the idea this would be a battle. I bet as the race gets closer and closer you'll see a consider increase in national money flowing into both coffers.

The top states for contributions:

Santorum's coffers have received large contributions from residents in Virginia ($602,000), New York ($509,000) and Florida ($482,000) while Casey has drawn his largest out-of-state support from New York ($547,000), California ($324,000) and Washington, D.C. ($277,000).

Santorum is a national figure with national ambitions. He's well known, be it famously or infamously, and half his contributions have come from outside Pennsylvania and a third of Casey's, according to the Morning Call's analysis. I'll bet we'll continue seeing an influx of money from all over the country for each candidate. My feeling is they're probably pretty even rightnow in cash on hand, with Santorum having a slight advantage. The last reporting period had the Republican with around $9 million and the Democrat around $5 million. Since then Santorum spent around $4 million on television. The September 30th quarterly FEC reports will be very interesting.