Out-of-State Dollars Fuel Theresa Greenfield’s Campaign

Last quarter, Theresa Greenfield, the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s U.S. Senate race, broke fundraising records pulling over $28 million in a single quarter. To date, she has raised just shy of $40 million, has spent over $30.5 million, and had $9.4 million cash on hand as of September 30, 2020. 

Ernst had a good fundraising quarter last quarter as well, over $6.6 million, but was dwarfed by Greenfield, who has fundraised far more than she has campaigned. Ernst has raised over $21.5 million, spent $17.4 million, and as of September 30, 2020, had $4.3 million cash on hand. 

While both Ernst and Greenfield have benefitted from out-of-state donations, most of the fundraising tsunami that Greenfield has experienced have been from out-of-state.

In this last quarter, over $17.8 million of individual contributions were from out-of-state donors, while $1.2 million came from within the state. According to OpenSecrets, 92.1 percent of her contributions for this election cycle ($26.6 million) came from out-of-state.

OpenSecrets reports that Greenfield’s top metro areas are:

1. New York – $3,255,788
2. Washington, DC Metro – $2,269,323
3. San Francisco – $2,256,387
4. Boston – $2,003,111
5. Los Angeles-Long Beach – $1,793,343

Her top zip codes are:

1. 10024 (New York, NY) – $315,984
2. 10023 (New York, NY) – $273,546
3. 20815 (Chevy Chase, MD) – $239,124
4. 50312 (Des Moines, IA) – $205,298
5. 20008 (Washington, DC) – $196,299
6. 94301 (Palo Alto, CA) – $175,789
7. 10025 (New York, NY) – $174,252
8. 10011 (New York, NY) – $166,194
9. 10128 (New York, NY) – $153,618
10. 94114 (San Francisco, CA) – $149,980

Comparatively, all but two of Ernst’s top ten zip codes for fundraising are in Iowa. 

There has been over $100 million in outside spending in this race to benefit Greenfield that includes her out-of-state donors (individuals and groups), as well as outside SuperPACs and PACs spending independently of her campaign. 

Greenfield has pledged to not take a “dime” of corporate PAC money but has. She has accepted $272,800 from Democrat Leadership PACs that are funded by corporate interests.  

She said she wants to “stem the tide” of dark money groups, but when asked about the dark money groups pouring money into the state, Greenfield said during the WHO-TV Democratic Primary debate in May, “I don’t control those groups. I don’t even know who they are. I wouldn’t even know who to call.”

“But you could say right now because they would know,” WHO-TV political director Dave Price, the debate moderator, countered. Greenfield laughed in response.