Democratic State Rep. David Richardson raised more than $500,000 in the final three months of 2017 for his run to become the next U.S. Congressman in Florida’s 27th District, according to FloridaPolitics.com.
Adding in what he raised earlier in the year brings his total to $1 million since announcing his run this past summer.
“Fundraising is not especially fun, but if I’m going to run a successful campaign for Congress, then I need to have the resources to communicate with voters,” Richardson wrote on his Facebook page. “As with everything else I’ve done in my life, once I make a commitment to do something I give it my all.”
Richardson continued, saying that while he has received a few big donor checks, most of the contributions are coming from grassroots supporters averaging $31.58 per donation.
“Since we started the campaign on July 10, more than 8,700 individual donors have made more than 12,000 online contributions. Ninety percent of all online contributions have been for $25 or less,” Richardson said.
Richardson decided he would run for the District 27 seat after the district’s current holder, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, announced that she would be retiring.
Richardson is just one of a handful of Democrats who have already thrown their hats into a race that includes state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez and Miami Beach City Commissioners Kristen Rosen Gonzalez and Ken Russell, among others.
“I’ve been looking at the seat for a couple of years,” Richardson said in an interview with Watermark back in June 2017. “All of my state representative seat sits in the congressional district. I had decided that I wasn’t going to run against [Ros-Lehtinen]. I really thought that she would have retired in 2020. I would be termed out in 2020.”
Richardson feels he has a viable path to victory for District 27 and has already amassed a list of endorsements including those from the Victory Fund, the South Florida LGBTQ rights watchdog group SAVE and, most recently, Equality PAC.
Equality PAC, the political action committee founded by leaders of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, announced Jan. 2 the endorsements of three LGBTQ candidates for Congress: Lauren Baer for Florida District 18, Chris Pappas for New Hampshire District 01 and Richardson.
“Rep. David Richardson is a tenacious fighter for the people of Florida,” said Equality PAC Chair Mark Takano (D-CA) in a statement. “In addition to taking on the for-profit prison system and strengthening free, public education, David has fought for LGBT equality since his first days in the Florida legislature. That he already represents a significant portion of the FL-27 and his grass roots support shows he is ready to lead. We are proud to endorse his campaign.”
Richardson will face off against his Democratic opponents in the primary election Aug. 28, the same day one of the five Republicans in the race will be looking for their party’s nomination. The general election between the two parties’ winners is Nov. 6.
