Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni, an ex-foreign service officer challenging U.S. Rep. Pete Olson in Texas’ 22nd Congressional District, announced Monday he has raised more than $420,000 in the first fundraising quarter of the election cycle.

"I want to say thank you to each and every person who contributed to this campaign,” said Kulkarni, who last year came within 5 percentage points of unseating the Sugar Land Republican in 2018. “Unlike our opponent, our campaign is powered by the support of grassroots donors, not corporate PAC money. That we were able to achieve such historic success without the backing of corporate special interests shows how hungry our district is for change."

In the same time frame, Olson raised $273,000, according to his campaign finance report. Olson’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In his first run for office in 2018, Kulkarni raised $1.6 million and Olson raised $1.5 million, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.

Kulkarni was known for his outreach efforts as he formed a multilingual campaign team to court the district’s highly diverse population.

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In his second bid for office, Kulkarni said his efforts will largely revolve around registering new voters in the district, where he has identified roughly 70,000 unregistered residents who are eligible to vote.

Olson, who was first elected in 2008, has also invested in outreach programs to work with his increasingly diverse constituents, including creating advisory groups for the Indo-American and Asian-American communities.

“I’ve committed my time to understand and receive guidance from everyone whom I am honored to represent,” Olson said in a statement last year.

The district, once safely Republican, has nearly doubled in population since 2000, swelling to more than 897,000, largely due to immigration. Foreign-born residents make up a sizable part of that growth. According to U.S. Census data, one-quarter of the residents of the district are foreign-born — the second-highest percentage in the state, behind the neighboring 7th Congressional District in Houston.

At the core of the district is Fort Bend County, which has nearly equal shares of Hispanic, black and white residents. It has been called the most ethnically diverse county in the nation by Rice University’s Steve Klineberg of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

Nyanza Moore, a lawyer and Fox 26 political commentator, is also seeking the Democratic nomination. Moore has raised $43,500 so far, according to FEC data.