State Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford, raised $160,000 in the last quarter of 2011 and has roughly $300,000 cash-on-hand, according to a statement from his campaign for U.S. Senate.
For those keeping track, ex-Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, who also wants the nomination, announced this week that her Senate campaign raised “over $273,000 and has cash on hand of about $890,000.”
And earlier this month U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy announced he had raised $720,000 in the 4th quarter.
Tong’s campaign manager continued to try to use his candidate’s underdog status to his advantage:
“Our campaign is an underdog’s campaign and that is exactly what our state needs right now. Our strategy isn’t to out raise Washington’s candidate. We aren’t interested in funding our campaign with Wall Street and Washington PAC money. Our plan is to have the resources necessary to run a very aggressive ground operation and peak at the right time,” said campaign manager, Marc Bradley.
Bradley doesn’t mention Murphy by name, but the “Wall Street” comment echoes accusations Bysiewicz has been leveling at the perceived frontrunner.
To be fair, I just flipped through Tong’s prior financial disclosures yesterday and there were $1,000 and $2,500 donations from folks who perhaps don’t all work directly on Wall Street, but are employed by major players in the financial services industry in Stamford, New York and elsewhere – UBS, Trilogy Capital, Oak Investment Partners, Goldman, Sachs & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Freepoint Commodities, Aladdin Capital, PSQ Capital, Citigroup and Lubben Capital.