Still, Brown holds a strong advantage, with $12.8 million in his campaign account, a record amount for any Massachusetts candidate this early in a regular election cycle.
Warren, by comparison, has just over $6 million on hand in her account, according to her campaign.
Warren, who has never run for office before and has no fund-raising structure to draw upon, stunned the political world this fall when she raised $3.15 million in the few weeks surrounding her announcement that she had officially entered the race.
Tad Devine, an experienced Washington-based Democratic media consultant, said Warren’s fund-raising prowess is startling for a candidate with no background in electoral politics.
“That is an extraordinary amount of money to be raised by a first-time candidate,’’ he said.
“Even in a big state, raising $2 million in one quarter is a big haul for an incumbent US senator,’’ said Devine, who has advised Democrats in Senate races across the country for 20 years, including Kennedy’s famous 1994 battle to beat back a challenge from Mitt Romney.
Brown broke all records when he ran in the January 2010 special election to fill Kennedy’s seat, hauling in $14 million in the 19 days leading up to the election, as the race became a national cause for conservatives across the country.
Until then, among the most costly US Senate races in Massachusetts history was the 1996 battle between US Senator John F. Kerry and William F. Weld, then governor.
That race, too, drew national attention, allowing Weld to raise $7.1 million. Kerry took in $4.1 million, while also using $1.32 million in personal funds.
Combined, the two spent about $16 million, a level that Brown and Warren will almost assuredly surpass in the coming months.
This year’s race, which both national parties feel is critical to their control of the Senate, is also expected to generate millions of dollars of television ads from third-party political action committees.
