Younkin sets record for fundraising

BY SARAH RANKIN

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s main fundraising apparatus will soon report raising $5.75 million in this year’s second quarter, a sum that surpasses what any previous governor of the state has raised over an entire year, according to the group’s accounting.

The haul will bring to $8.5 million the total Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia political action committee has raised in the first six months of 2023, according to details provided to The Associated Press ahead of a Monday reporting deadline. And it will leave Spirit of Virginia with $6 million in cash on hand just over two months before the start of early voting in this year’s legislative elections that will decide political control of the currently divided General Assembly.

“The Governor has built and scaled an unprecedented campaign to hold the House and flip the Senate,” Dave Rexrode, the PAC’s chairman and a senior adviser to Youngkin, said in a statement to the AP. “His commonsense approach to cutting taxes, backing the blue, empowering parents, and tackling our behavioral health crisis has united Virginians and he’s just getting started.”