Carlos Beruff puts in $8 million of own money into Senate campaign

In his longshot bid for the U.S. Senate, Manatee County homebuilder Carlos Beruff has loaned his campaign more than $8 million and donated another $151,000, new campaign finance reports released by the Federal Election Commission show.

From July 1 to Aug 10, Beruff loaned his campaign 3.9 million. That is in addition to $4.1 million he loaned his campaign from the time it started in February through June 30.

Beruff has raised just $30,000 from other donors.

The $8.2 million so far from Beruff is short of his earlier projections to spend between $10 million to $15 million to win the seat. Beruff, however, is still not the nation’s top self-funded candidate of Congress this year. That title remains with David Trone, a Democrat who lost his primary race earlier this year for a U.S. House seat in Maryland, despite spending $10 million of his own money on the race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Beruff is the top U.S. Senate self-funder in the 2016 cycle.

For the total campaign Beruff has raised and loaned his campaign a total of $8.2 million and spent about $8.2 million - primarily on television ads. He had $300,000 left in his campaign account as of Aug. 10.

Beruff is trying to beat U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio in the Aug. 30 primary. Rubio has reported raising $5.4 million since he jumped back into the U.S. Senate race in June. He spent just $760,000 as of Aug. 10, the newly released FEC reports show. That leaves him with $4.7 million cash on hand.

This story was originally published August 23, 2016 at 11:38 AM with the headline "Carlos Beruff puts in $8 million of own money into Senate campaign."