Yesterday, Blake Miguez put up the first campaign finance report of his bid for the U.S. Senate next year, and the numbers therein show that he’s a very real threat to take out Bill Cassidy in the Republican primary.

In just 13 days, conservative fighter and America First candidate Blake Miguez reported over $1.8 million for his U.S. Senate campaign to unseat RINO and Trump-impeacher Bill Cassidy. The haul includes over $800,000 in individual contributions, already outraising Cassidy head-to-head in this category, and exceeding the total of every other challenger combined.

“Louisiana conservatives are tired of being betrayed by phony Republicans and election-season pretenders like Bill Cassidy,” Miguez said. “We launched this campaign to give our state a voice that won’t back down, a fighter who won’t quit, and a conservative who hits the mark. The early response and enthusiasm make it clear—this campaign is exactly what Louisiana is looking for.”

A clear contrast: Cassidy’s fundraising relied on his crutch of DC Swamp money and establishment support – while Miguez’s numbers were driven by strong support from people across Louisiana.

Miguez’s rapid fundraising haul reflects growing momentum behind his candidacy and sends a clear signal that his America First message is resonating – loudly – and the campaign is confident momentum will only continue to build.

“We’re just getting started,” said Miguez.

Miguez’ $1.8 million doesn’t look like a lot compared to Cassidy’s $9 million, and it isn’t as much as the $2.1 million John Fleming showed in his report.

But there’s more to the story.

Cassidy had to move some money around to show a $2 million fundraising quarter. In actual campaign donations he was more like $1.6 million. That’s double what Miguez did, but (1) Cassidy is the incumbent, (2) Cassidy has been running for re-election for years and has a fully-staffed campaign organization and (3) Miguez was in the race for a grand total of two weeks before the cutoff for the 2nd quarter finance report.

Raising $800,000 in two weeks is a big deal. It shows two things that you’d better have if you think you’re going to take out a sitting U.S. senator. First, it tells you Miguez can get on the phone and talk to money people in a persuasive enough way to shake a check out of them, and that he has the work ethic to do a whole lot of that.

And second, it tells you there is a real market for him as a senatorial candidate.

We picked up Nolan McKendry’s post yesterday from The Center Square talking about Team Cassidy’s brushback of Fleming, the upshot of that being that Fleming had put $2 million of his own money into his campaign account, then he took it out and put it back in. Take out that $2 million and Fleming only raised $115,000 and spent $60,000 more than that.

We have no problem with the idea of John Fleming replacing Cassidy in the Senate. We aren’t crazy about the fact Fleming is going to be 75 on Election Day next year, and in optimal circumstances you’d say that’s definitely too old for a first-term senator, but faced with the choice of Cassidy or Fleming over the next six years we’d take Fleming with no reservation.

The problem is that when you’re a former U.S. congressman and current statewide official and you’ve been running for the Senate for eight months now, and all you show is $115,000 in fundraising receipts and you’re spending more than you’re taking in at this stage of the campaign, it shows that you’re on the wrong side of the two things Miguez proved he is in the last two weeks of the second quarter.

Either Fleming isn’t really making the fundraising calls, or there’s no market out there for John Fleming as Louisiana’s next U.S. senator, or both.

And you can say it’s too early to make that determination, we’re almost a year away from the GOP primary next year, and nothing is decided, and you’d be correct. There are at least two well-known Louisiana politicians – Eric Skrmetta and Julia Letlow – who haven’t yet made the race but might.

But if you’re Fleming and you see Miguez in two weeks raise eight times what you’ve raised in a whole quarter, you might have to stop and consider whether you’re really the guy.

That’s not a slam at him. It’s a cold calculation based on the facts on the ground.

What Miguez managed to do after he announced for the Senate, in just two weeks, qualifies him as a Tier One opponent for Cassidy. So far, he’s the only one we can say that about.