| With the passage of the first-quarter FEC filing deadline, all Congresspersons and candidates should now have filed. Michele Bachmann has already filed, and her fellow Minnesota freshmen Tim Walz and Keith Ellison have done the same.
Walz raised a shade over $187,000 in the first quarter of 2007, and reports having $155,000 in cash on hand. More than $82,000 of Walz's total came from individuals, while the remainer came from PACs and other political committees.
Of the itemized portion of Walz's receipts, $13,500 came from individuals who listed their profession as "Attorney," including $5,500 from employees of the Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi firm. Robins Kaplan PAC also made a $2,000 contribution to Walz's coffers. Mike Ciresi, a partner in that firm, is expected to announce a run for U.S. Senate this week. Entertainer and radio personality Al Franken is already actively running in that race, and sent max-out contributions to Walz. Franken's Midwest Values PAC also dropped $10,000 into Walz's campaign account.
Other notable contributions to Walz include $1,000 from the National Rifle Association, $5,000 from VoteVets, and what appears to be an in-kind donation of a bottle of wine from the Wine Institute PAC valued at $20.33.
Keith Ellison's district is considered less competitive than Walz's, and his fundraising total is, correspondingly, lower. Ellison reports raising almost $47,000 in Q1, with cash-on-hand totaling just over $36,500.
Ellison's PAC fundraising total is small: just $6,250. His report seems to indicate that he is drawing support from the Muslim community across the country as well as in Minnesota. |
