Ryan Nicol
U.S. Rep. Donna Shalala has raised more than $422,000 in the second quarter of 2019, bringing her current election cycle haul to more than $857,000.
That’s according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Shalala once again relied on ActBlue to help transmit the vast majority of those individual contributions. ActBlue is a nonprofit organization that serves as an online fundraising tool for Democratic candidates.
According to the latest FEC filings, Shalala spent more than $103,000 during the second quarter. That brings her expenditures for the cycle to nearly $460,000.
Including cash held over from her previous run in 2018, Shalala has just under $548,000 on hand so far for her 2020 reelection bid.
Shalala is a freshman in the U.S. House. She took over the seat in Florida’s 27th Congressional District after defeating Republican candidate Maria Elvira Salazar last November.
That seat became vacant after longtime U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen decided to retire from Congress.
Health care, immigration and foreign policy have been among the big-ticket items Shalala has focused on thus far during her time in the House.
The freshman has pushed for extending health care coverage and defending the Affordable Care Act from GOP-backed court challenges. However, she has avoided pushing for Medicare-for-all.
On immigration, Shalala has been among several members of the Florida delegation to call for the closure of the migrant detention facility in Homestead. And Shalala visited the Venezuela border in March in an effort to push back against the Nicolás Maduro regime.
Shalala was joined in the freshman class by U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell of Florida’s 26th Congressional District. Mucarsel-Powell has also been raising a significant amount of money. She took in $600,000 in the second quarter and has raised more than $1 million in 2019 alone.
