In campaign finance reports filed Tuesday, covering the period ending August 10, political newcomer Brian Murphy has reportedly raised only $210,000 in his long-shot quest for the Republican nomination for governor of Maryland. That includes $107,000 that Murphy, a former commodities trader, personally contributed to his campaign since entering the race in late April.
Murphy, 33, is challenging former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., in the September 14 GOP primary for the right to take on Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley in the general election. Ehrlich is hoping for a rematch against O’Malley, who defeated him by 117,000 votes in the heavily Democratic state four years ago.
Murphy’s media-starved candidacy received an unexpected and much-needed boost earlier this month when he was publicly endorsed by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, but her August 4 endorsement has done little to improve the novice candidate’s pitiful fundraising numbers.
Losing her magic? Palin-backed candidates are winless in August.
Much to the chagrin of the little-known Marylander, the diva of the Tea Party Express appears to be losing her magic at the most inopportune moment.
Palin’s prowess on the campaign trail has been severely tested during the month of August as all five of the candidates that she has endorsed, including Washington U.S. Senate candidate Clint Didier and Wyoming gubernatorial candidate Rita Meyer, as well as Georgia’s Karen Handel, who narrowly lost a GOP runoff to U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, a former Democrat, last Tuesday, have gone down to defeat.
It’s a track record that’s unlikely to improve with Murphy’s long-shot candidacy against the 52-year-old Ehrlich, who has been locked in a tight race with O’Malley for several months now. Several recent polls show the two men in a statistical dead heat.
According to the University of Maryland’s Center for American Politics and Citizenship, which made the reports of the three major gubernatorial candidates available on-line, Ehrlich reported raising nearly $3.2 million since January while Gov. O’Malley, who faces only token opposition in the Democratic primary, raised $3.3 million during the same period and enjoys a substantial cash advantage over Ehrlich heading into the autumn campaign.
Murphy, who said that he plans to purchase television and radio advertising in the densely-populated Baltimore media market as the primary nears, reported $41,333 cash-on-hand heading into the final month of the primary campaign.
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