MO SEN nominee/Aud. Claire McCaskill's (D) latest FEC report shows she ended the 3rd quarter (on 9/30) with less than $247K CoH, far below any other credible Senate candidate at this point. However the McCaskill camp informs us that before the quarter ended, they had already spent $2M on advertising covering the final 3 weeks on the campaign. (They disbursed nearly $5.5M total over the 3rdQ). They also state that their finances are comparable to those of Sen. Jim Talent (R) at this point in the 2002 campaign before he went on to defeat then-Sen. Jean Carnahan (D). McCaskill spokesperson Adrianne Marsh: "We feel very good about this quarter; we are meeting or surpassing all of our goals."

Talent spent about $4.8M over the 3rdQ, but ended 9/30 with $4.2M CoH. [QUINN MCCORD]