Harrison: Record $57M haul in US Senate race has been spent

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Jaime Harrison raised a record-shattering $57 million last quarter in his bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, but the South Carolina Democrat told The Associated Press on Thursday that the cash is already spent.

Harrison's financial haul in the third quarter of this year was the most ever brought in by a Senate candidate in a quarterly fundraising period and came as other Democratic Senate challengers raked in eye-popping cash against Republican incumbents.

At the time, pundits questioned if Harrison, an associate chairman of the Democratic National Committee, would even be able to spend the mountain of money, noting South Carolina's relatively small size and inexpensive media markets.

Harrison's campaign said the money essentially had to be spent pretty much as quickly as it came in, in order to raise his profile to a level competitive with that of Graham. A three-term Republican who also previously served in the U.S. House, Graham maintains a high national profile as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. During that same timeframe, Graham raised $28 million which his campaign said represented the largest amount ever raised by any Republican Senate candidate in a single quarter, in any state.

“Yes, we raised $57 million, but we spent $60 million," Harrison said. “But that is what we had to do in order to get this thing to toss-up status, in order to bridge the gap.”

Television ads in the Senate race have been wall-to-wall for weeks, with both candidates, and the third-party groups supporting them, flooding airwaves. In a memo shared with the AP, Harrison’s campaign said that $34 million of that third-quarter money was spent on television advertising.

Another $8 million bought the same inundated space on digital advertising platforms, while $2.2 million was spent on radio...