Tim Ryan raises $17M in three months for Ohio Senate bid

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) raised more than $17 million for his Senate bid over the last three months, a sum nearly twice as large as his campaign’s previous best.

Ryan’s campaign said it raked in $17.2 million between July 1 and the end of September. The vast majority of those funds — about 95 percent — came from contributions of less than $100, according to his campaign.

Ryan’s latest numbers show how his pace of fundraising has ramped up in recent months. In the second quarter of the year, covering April 1 through June 30, the Ohio Democrat pulled in about $9.1 million.

Ryan’s campaign didn’t say how much money it has in the bank, though his most recent federal filing from July showed him with just under $3.6 million on hand. 

Ryan is facing Republican J.D. Vance, the author and venture capitalist, in the November general election to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R). 

While Ohio has lurched to the right in recent years — former President Trump carried the state in 2016 and 2020 — recent polling shows Ryan and Vance in a statistical dead heat.

Vance himself has raised far less than Ryan so far. He hasn’t released third-quarter figures yet but his most recent filing with the Federal Election Commission showed him ending the month of June with less than $630,000 in the bank. 

Vance was helped early on by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel in Ohio’s hotly contested Republican Senate primary. But there are signs that Thiel may be taking a step back from the race: CNBC reported this week that Thiel had signaled to allies that he may be done helping out Vance’s campaign.