Wilson, Evette, Mace battle for top fundraising spot in governor’s race

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Newly submitted campaign finance documents show Attorney General Alan Wilson with a slight lead among the candidates for governor in campaign contributions, but a closer look at the numbers reveals that fundraising is even tighter than it appears.

Wilson’s disclosures report nearly $1.3 million from donors in the period covering July, August and September.

However, around $260,000 of Wilson’s contributions come from previous donations made to his attorney general account. Wilson’s team says each of those contributions had to be individually approved with the donor before being transferred.

Quarter 3 filings show Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette brought in $964,146 and Representative Nancy Mace brought in $939,531. Supporters contributed $796,067 to Representative Ralph Norman’s campaign.

However, if you include the initial donations when they launched their campaigns, which happens to be in Quarter 3 for Mace, Evette and Norman, the new totals show an extremely tight race at the top. Initial contributions are not reflected in the Quarter 3 reports.

The new totals in this case mean Evette actually took in more money than anyone else from July to September with $1,096,732. Mace brought in $1,067,674 and Wilson comes in third with $1,039,039. These contribution numbers remove any donations that were returned.

State Representative Josh Kimbrell did not file his third-quarter campaign disclosure report as of Friday night.

The reports show Evette has spent more than double her next closest opponent so far. Her campaign spent $869,058 in the opening months of the campaign. Most of that funding was spent on an early TV ad buy to boost name recognition. Mace spent the second most at $351,329.

At the end of Quarter 3, Evette now has the least amount of money on hand at just over half a million, $300,000 of which is loans. Meanwhile, Norman leads the pack with $1.1 million on hand; however, his war chest is boosted by a half-million-dollar loan.

Neither Mace nor Wilson took out any loans and maintains a cash on hand balance of $716,344 and $1,085,036, respectively.

While all of the other candidates have several hundred individual donors, Mace’s campaign stands out for having nearly 19,000 small donors. Several donors appear more than once in her disclosures.

In the last race for governor, Henry McMaster raised around $5 million ahead of the election.