Democrat John Bel Edwards is outraising Republican rival David Vitter in the Louisiana governor’s race runoff campaign.
The Associated Press reports campaigns for the two candidates announced today how much money they’ve raised for the Nov. 21 runoff, as new fundraising reports were due.
The Edwards campaign says since the Oct. 24 primary, the Democratic state representative has received $4.5 million in contributions. Vitter’s campaign—whose initial fundraising prowess dwarfed his competitors for governor—says the U.S. senator has raised $2.6 million since the primary.
That’s a turnaround from earlier in the campaign, before the race was whittled to two contenders. Ahead of the primary, Vitter had outraised Edwards three-to-one and had brought in nearly as much cash as his three major competitors combined.
Also today, Vitter released his latest television spot, in which he turns to reality TV star Willie Robertson to try to help him move past a years-old prostitution scandal that has been revived in the Louisiana governor’s race.
The two men, dressed in camouflage, are standing in front of a hunting vehicle as Robertson, one of the bearded men of Duck Dynasty, says of Vitter: “I know he’s made some mistakes, but who hasn’t? The whole story of the Bible is about redemption. I’m concerned about our state.”
Vitter, a U.S. senator who faces state Rep. Edwards in the Nov. 21 runoff, apologized in 2007 for a “serious sin” after he was linked through phone records to Washington’s “D.C. Madam.”
