ME-Sen 2020: Collins challenged by rural doctor and activist Cathleen London

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's cute how people think this money will scare Collins. Do these people have any idea whatsoever how much the billionaire GOP donors wanted Kavanaugh on the court? They could, and probably did, guarantee her any amount of money in exchange for her vote.

I doubt anyone (at least anyone with a clue) thinks/thought that Collins herself would have a $ problem. But there is a big difference for her facing a challenger who starts out with $0 and has to spend a lot of their time and energy establishing their viability and begging for cash, and facing a challenger who starts off with $4+ million before the 2020 cycle has even begun.

Exactly. The marginal utility of money in politics decreases very fast anyway (meaning it's a much bigger deal to go from 1M to 5M than to go from 5M to 10M).

[Adam Griffin]

Just to illustrate the inherent money advantage the Democratic nominee is likely to have: in the past 4 Maine Senate elections, the winner spent an average of $11.75 per vote earned. A general rule of thumb is that anywhere from $5 to $10 per vote is needed in order to run a competitive and viable campaign; Maine, however, is a relatively small state, hence the increased average per vote spending.

Just from these two crowdfunding platforms, the Democratic nominee in 2020 will start out with the equivalent of $11.10 per voter needed for a majority (based on 2016 total votes; $4.16 million for 373,964 votes).