WASHINGTON _ Rep. Devin Nunes' Democratic opponent Phil Arballo raised more than $1 million to unseat the California Republican by the end of 2019, raising more than $700,000 in the final quarter.
Arballo raised nearly half of his funds for the year during impeachment hearings when Nunes was vociferously defending President Donald Trump. Between mid-November and early December � the peak of impeachment in the House � Arballo raised a whopping $450,000, according to campaign spokesman Andrew Feldman.
This is despite Arballo not explicitly stating he supports impeachment. When McClatchy asked Feldman to clarify Arballo's position, he was noncommittal.
"Phil believes Congress has a moral obligation to hold the president accountable, but his focus is on replacing Nunes with an honest representative who will focus on fighting for quality, affordable health care, good jobs, clean air and water," Feldman said.
Nunes was a fixture in Trump's defense on the House Intelligence Committee, where he is the top Republican. Nunes frequently called impeachment "the Ukraine hoax" and said Democrats were looking for any reason to impeach Trump while also saying none of Trump's behavior was inappropriate when he pressured officials to investigate former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Arballo has funded ads against Nunes spotlighting his own alleged involvement in Ukraine, namely that phone logs show Nunes communicating with people involved in pressuring Ukrainian officials, including Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Giuliani's now-indicted business associate, Lev Parnas.
Nunes has filed six lawsuits in 2019 against journalists, Twitter parody accounts and watchdog and political groups, which Arballo has also spotlighted in fundraising attempts. The anonymous Twitter parody account known as Devin Nunes' Cow, which Nunes is suing, has supported Arballo, commonly tweeting links to his fundraising site to its nearly 700,000 followers.
But Nunes has successfully fundraised off of the lawsuits as well, sitting on $7 million in cash on hand at the end of the third quarter. Nunes has not yet released his fourth-quarter fundraising numbers, and his office did not respond to a request for comment.
It's not yet clear how much Nunes' campaign raised during impeachment, but Nunes' controversial nature has served his funding well in the past.
Tom Dallas, campaign manager of another Democratic challenger to Nunes, Bobby Bliatout, said Bliatout raised more than $130,000 in the fourth quarter of 2019, though he was not able to provide an exact number Tuesday. Bliatout had nearly $200,000 in cash on hand at the end of the third quarter, though the campaign also owes $100,000 in debts.
Bliatout, who also used Nunes' role in impeachment in his fundraising, does support impeachment.
"What the president did was illegal, and I believe that we must always confront abuses of power," Bliatout said. "The president put his own interests above the public interest and must be held accountable for his reckless actions."
Fundraising reports for the fourth quarter of 2019 are due to the Federal Election Commission on Jan. 31.
