I guess Andrea Murray wasn’t discouraged by a state Senate campaign that, in the Republican wave year of 2024, saw her finish a distant fourth in the deep-blue Windsor district — and blow a big hole in her family’s bank account because she lavishly self-funded her own campaign. Much of her money was spent on two different out-of-state consultancies that shamelessly ripped her off did her no favors at all. Her investment paid the tiniest of dividends; she finished less than two percentage points ahead of two Republicans who barely campaigned at all. (The above screenshot was taken from a two-minute campaign video lavishly produced by one of those consultancies.)

Also, she regularly and wildly flouted campaign finance reporting laws, a practice she has carried forward into 2026. As noted previously, she missed the March 15 and July 1 deadlines despite spending at least some money on Vermont Daily Chronicle ads, a wasteful practice since the vast majority of VDC readers live outside Windsor County. One could argue that the ads could connect her to the wider conservative donor class, except she has yet to attract more than a handful of donors outside her own pocket.

Well, folks, on July 26 she filed both of this year’s reports at once plus the report that was due on July 1 of last year. And there are only five days to go before the next deadline. Great. We’ll probably see her August 1 report sometime in October. Too bad there are no penalties for late filing, thanks to the Legislature’s self-dealing on campaign finance issues.

Anyway, a look at her latest reports shows that she’s not doing anything different from two years ago. Still running in a district that hasn’t elected a Republican to the state Senate since 1994, still pouring her own money into a certain-to-lose campaign, still attracting little money from the rest of the human race.

So let’s take a look, shall we?

The extremely belated July 1, 2025 report shows long columns of zeroes with one exception: She forgave $24,000 in loans to her own campaign from the 2024 cycle. That’s one way to clear the decks.

The March 15, 2026 report is nothing but zeroes. No money raised or spent. Not even a raid on her family bank account.

The July 1, 2026 filing has a little meat on the bone. Murray reported raising $15,024.01 and spending a robust 99 cents between March 15 and July 1. It should surprise you not at all to learn that $10,000 of her total came from her own pockets, which are awfully deep for someone who presents as a cattle farmer and humble daughter of the land.

Unusually, she did manage to raise more than $5,000 from other people. She had four total donors not named “Andrea Murray.” They include longtime Republican functionary Wendy Wilton, whose town of residence is listed as “Milon, VT” ($200), former VTGOP chair Deb Billado ($1,000), and two folks from El Paso, Texas named “M. Luna” and “L. Luna” ($1,900 apiece). The source of her other $24.01 is not specified; donations of under $100 do not need to be documented. A check of the Federal Election Commission database reveals no federal-level donors from El Paso named Luna, so who these people are and why they chose to spend money on a losing cause in faraway Vermont I have no idea. The 99-cent expenditure was paid to WinRed for donation processing fees.

So far, Murray is shepherding her resources more carefully than in 2024 since there are no signs of any outside consultants exploiting her naïveté assisting her campaign — or any other expenditures at all. Not even Vermont Daily Chronicle. Maybe she didn’t start running those ads until after July 1, or maybe she just hasn’t gotten around to paying the bill yet. Also, she doesn’t appear to have a campaign website and her campaign Facebook page is closed to outsiders. Great tactic if you’re trying to reach persuadable voters.

In those Chronicle ads, Murray is presenting herself as a voice for rural Vermont, the red-hot talking point among state Republicans this year. In 2024, she adopted the costume du jour, presenting herself as a common-sense fiscal conservative à la Phil Scott.

Neither is an accurate rendering of the real-life Murray. She and her husband August were ringleaders of the 2023-24 effort by Trumpian elements in the Windsor County Repubican Committee to rid themselves of longtime county chair John MacGovern, a very conservative fellow who committed the unforgivable sin of failing to support Trump. That effort included filing suit against MacGovern, the state party, and state party chair Paul Dame, a suit that (a) blatantly violated Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment and (b) was immediately laughed out of court because the insurgents had already won the fight. MacGovern wanted nothing to do with those people and gave up any claim to the job before the suit was filed.

So that’s Andrea Murray, flouting the law and dumping thousands into a doomed campaign in one of the most liberal Senate districts in the state. It might help her finish ahead of her two Republican ticketmates from 2024, who are both running again this year and show no signs of any campaign activity so far. But that’s the absolute limit of her prospects no matter how much money she spends on herself.