Rep. Beto O'Rourke Beto O'RourkeJimmy Carter says his son smoked pot with Willie Nelson on White House roof O'Rourke endorses Kennedy for Senate: 'A champion for the values we're most proud of' 2020 Democrats do convention Zoom call MORE (D-Texas) outraised Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzMurkowski: Supreme Court nominee should not be taken up before election Battle lines drawn on precedent in Supreme Court fight Sunday shows - Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death dominates MORE (R-Texas) in the final quarter of 2017.

O'Rourke raised $2.4 million in the last three months of 2017, according to the Dallas Morning News.

The Cruz campaign announced it brought in $1.9 million during that period. Cruz raised a total of $7.1 million in 2017 and ended the year with $7.3 million in cash on hand, according to the publication.

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O'Rourke finished up the year with $4.6 million in cash on hand.

“The intensity of support and breadth of that support is really encouraging,” O’Rourke said in an interview with the newspaper. “Money is not the most important thing, but it is important, and it will be critical to our chances in the upcoming primary in March and the election.”

He said the premise of his campaign involves going to people he wants to represent and listening to them in their communities.

“That will be more powerful than any amount of money or slickly-produced TV ads or any of that conventional campaign playbook tactics that we’ve seen forever now," he said.

Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, criticized O'Rourke, accusing him of having "blind loyalty to Washington Democrats like [Senate Minority Leader Charles] Schumer [D-N.Y.]" and saying O'Rourke "has been stalling disaster aid to Houston [which] shows that he will always put partisanship ahead of doing what’s best for Texas."

A recent poll by a left-leaning firm showed Cruz leading O'Rourke by single digits.

Democrats have an uphill battle in Texas’s Senate race, but they’ve been feeling more bullish on elections in redder states given recent upsets in GOP strongholds. Still, no Democrat has won a Senate election in Texas since 1988.

Cruz was first elected to the office easily in 2012, taking more than 56 percent of the vote.