photo by: AP File Photos

Kansas Republican Senate candidate Roger Marshall, left, and Democratic Senate candidate Barbara Bollier, right.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democratic Kansas Senate candidate Barbara Bollier’s campaign raised nearly five times the money that Republican rival Roger Marshall did for an unexpectedly tough race in the conservative state, campaign finance reports filed Thursday show.

Marshall raised close to $2.7 million from mid-July through September, records show. That’s dwarfed by the nearly $12.5 million that Bollier banked in the same time period.

So far, Bollier’s raised almost $20 million for her bid to win a Kansas Senate seat for Democrats for the first time since 1932.

Marshall has banked about $5.4 million.

Bollier is a Kansas City-area state senator who was a lifelong Republican before she switched parties at the end of 2018. Her fundraising has buoyed Democrats’ hopes of an unexpected pickup in the conservative state of Kansas.

Marshall is a two-term congressman for central and western Kansas, and he and GOP leaders are trying to keep Republicans in his fold partly by suggesting that a Bollier victory would all but ensure that Republicans lose their Senate majority.