Beto O'Rourke fundraising tops $8M in campaign against Ted Cruz Challenger has raised more than any Texas Democrat in a U.S. Senate race in 16 years

Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, speaks to supporters during a campaign stop in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Houston. The little-known El Paso congressman, 44, announced Friday that he is challenging incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in 2018, in an uphill battle in a state that has no elected a Democrat statewide since 1994. less Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, speaks to supporters during a campaign stop in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat on Sunday, April 2, 2017, in Houston. The little-known El Paso congressman, 44, announced Friday that ... more Photo: Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle Photo: Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Beto O'Rourke fundraising tops $8M in campaign against Ted Cruz 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

AUSTIN -- Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke announced Friday morning that he raised $2.2 million from mostly small donors since the start of the new year.

O'Rourke, a member of the U.S. House from El Paso hoping to defeat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in November, has now raised more than $8 million for his campaign since March 2017 -- the most any Democrat in Texas has raised in a U.S. Senate race in 16 years.

In 2012 Democrat Paul Sadler raised just $683,000 for the entire campaign against Cruz in his first campaign for the Senate. And in 2014, Democrat David Alameel raised less than $50,000 in his failed campaign against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

"This is how we are winning this race, getting our Democracy back and doing something really important for Texas and critical for our country," O'Rourke said in a statement to the media.

The new fundraising numbers come out just as one of the biggest voices in Democratic politics and O'Rourke appeared to make up for past issues. On Friday, the Texas AFL-CIO announced they will indeed endorse O'Rourke for the March 6 primary. Last month, the AFL-CIO voted not to endorse any candidate in the Senate race. O'Rourke has a 95 percent voting record with labor unions but many delegates were upset still with his vote in 2015 to grant President Barack Obama fast track negotiating power for international trade deals. O'Rourke has said he backed that, but didn't support the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

O'Rourke is also doing it without the help of political action committees. As part of his campaign, O'Rourke has pledged not to take any money from special interest PACs.

O'Rourke's surprising fundraising surge has brought notice from political experts like Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C. They previously had listed Cruz as being in a solidly safe Republican seat. But O'Rourke's aggressive campaigning and fundraising pushed them to move the race into a more competitive category, but still favoring Cruz.

Cruz, 47, still has a sizable financial advantage over O'Rourke, 45. Entering 2018, Cruz had more than $2 million more in his principle campaign account. Cruz had $6.4 million in the bank versus O'Rourke starting 2018 with $4.6 million.

But Cruz also had another $700,000 in a political action committee he runs and there is another $1.7 million in a super PAC allies of Cruz created late last year called Texans Are. There is $1 million in Texans Are that comes from one Dallas family. Lee Roy and Tandy Mitchell sent $500,000 each to that committee on Dec. 28. Lee Roy Mitchell is founder of Cinemark Theatres.

Candidates for the U.S. Senate must file new campaign disclosure reports with the Federal Election Commission outlining how much money they raised in the first 45 days of 2018. Those reports are not publicly available yet but O'Rourke released some of his numbers to the media early. Cruz had not publicly released his campaign fundraising totals for the first 45 days for 2018 as of Friday morning.

Jeremy Wallace writes about state politics and government for the Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter at @JeremySWallace.