Six months into the 2006 election cycle, Senate Democrats have set a torrid fundraising pace and have roughly twice the available campaign cash their GOP counterparts do, soon-to-be filed fundraising reports will show.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee finished the second quarter with a record-setting $15.2 million in the bank after raising $6.9 million in June alone.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee raised $4 million in June and had $8 million left in the bank at the end of last month. The NRSC raised a total of $11 million in the second quarter of the year, compared to a $13 million three-month total for the DSCC.

Senate Democrats’ fundraising has been buoyed by a variety of factors, including the high-profile battle over judicial nominations and the tenacity and New York fundraising base of DSCC Chairman Charles Schumer. The committee also had a schedule packed with fundraising events in June.

In fact, in six months’ time the DSCC has already eclipsed the committee’s fundraising total for all of 2003. So far this cycle Senate Democrats have raised $22.6 million, compared to the $22.4 million they took in two years ago.

“There is clearly growing concern over the Senate GOP’s failure to address the kitchen-table issues that keep Americans up at night and these numbers reflect those concerns,” DSCC spokesman Phil Singer said. “Americans recognize that the best way to get Washington to focus on their priorities is to get more Democrats elected to the U.S. Senate.”

But the NRSC is also ahead of where it stood at this juncture last cycle, having taken in almost $21 million for the year so far. At the end of the second quarter in 2003, the committee had raised $14.5 million and had $5.3 million in the bank.

At the end of May, the NRSC had nearly $6.1 million on hand while the DSCC had $8.9 million in the bank.

Last month’s President’s Dinner — a joint House/Senate fundraising venture — was expected to bring in between $8 million and $9 million for the NRSC and had been expected to provide a significant bump in the committee’s cash position.

NRSC spokesman Brian Nick said some of the President’s Dinner pledges were still coming in and that some had already been collected and incorporated into the committee’s May cash-on-hand figure.

The committee also paid off $3.6 million in debt from last cycle earlier this year.

“The DSCC has been effective at getting large sums of money through transfers from member’s campaigns and committees,” Nick said. “The NRSC will be making this push in the coming months.”