Some really great fundraising figures from our 2008 Democratic senate challengers. The warchests that some of these GOP senators are sitting on is a reminder of just what a challenge it is to unseat an incumbent and of the work we still have to do. First from MyDD's Road To 60 list:

AK-Sen: Mark Begich

Mark Begich had a great second quarter, having raised $1,034,660, which is pretty stunning considering:

We received 4099 contributions -- a whopping 73.6% were under $100.

That and the fact that Alaska only has only 626,000 residents.

Ted Stevens's fundraising has not yet been released.

NC-Sen: Kay Hagan

The Politico reported the good news last week:

Kay Hagan, a five-term state senator from the Greensboro area, announced this afternoon that she raised over $1.6 million over the last three months, with $1.2 million left in her campaign account at the end of June.

Still an uphill battle if she's going to unseat the flush with cash Dole though, who had a solid quarter herself:

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole says she raised more than $2.1 million in the second quarter.

In a press release, the Salisbury Republican's campaign announced that it had $2.7 million in cash on hand at the end of the second quarter.

TX-Sen: Rick Noriega

Noriega had a solid fundraising quarter. From a press release via e-mail:

·        Total Raised: $961,169.59 2QTR
·        Cash On Hand: $915,506.12
·        # of Donors this quarter: 5,702
·        # of Contributions this quarter: 6,768

This speaks to Noriega's online fundraising strength. It's no accident that he is consistently one of the top featured campaigns on ActBlue.

If you can, please help these three worthy challengers over at our Road To 60 ActBlue page.

OR-Sen:  Jeff Merkley

Jeff Merkley entered his general election campaign like a slingshot, having outraised Gordon Smith in the second quarter:

Merkley=$1.42 million
Smith=$1.35 million

But Smith's warchest is daunting:

Cash on hand:

Merkley=$560k
Smith=$4.5 million

All the same, Merkley's accomplishment should not be underestimated:

Jeff Merkley's campaign for U.S. Senate raised more than $1.42 million in the second quarter, three times what the campaign raised during the first three months of the year. [...]

Online contributions soared for Merkley over the past three months. The Merkley team raised more than $420,000 online in the second quarter, double the previous three quarters combined.

ME-Sen: Tom Allen

Roll Call (via brownsox) brings us the good news that Allen is pretty well keeping pace with Susan Collins:

Collins raised $1.06 million in the financial reporting period from April 1 to June 30. The Collins campaign reports it had raised $6.58 million this cycle and had more than $5.13 million on hand.

Meanwhile, Allen's campaign reported raising just over $1 million in those three months. Allen had $3.13 million in cash on hand.

OK-Sen: Andrew Rice

Via Brownsox, Rice had a really strong quarter:

A stellar fundraising quarter for Orange to Blue candidate Andrew Rice culminates in this report: $451,000 raised for the quarter, with nearly $750,000 cash-on-hand despite having spent fairly heavily on radio ads.

This was the Rice campaign's best quarter so far.

There's no word yet on what Jim Inhofe raised, but he had roughly $2.2 million on hand at the end of Q1.

NE-Sen: Scott Kleeb

Scott brought us the good news in his diary from yesterday:

I wanted you to be the first to hear the good news: thanks to your contributions, our grassroots campaign has managed to shatter expectations and outraise our opponent, a former two-term Governor and Bush Cabinet member, for the most recent fundraising quarter. Make no mistakes about it - change is in the air here in Nebraska.

The Journal Star reports: "Democratic Senate candidate Scott Kleeb seems to be finding fundraising traction in this heavily Republican state, bringing in nearly $700,000 in the latest reporting period and besting Republican Mike Johanns for the first time."

Kleeb's opponent, Mike Johanns still has $1.2 million cash on hand but it's great to see Kleeb eating into that advantage.