With Roger Sollenberger, Political Reporter

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The Big Dig this week… Why RNC Members Are Saying Their Fundraising Is ‘in the Toilet’

When Republican National Committee members met in Milwaukee last week, many of them had one persistent question on their minds: Why has fundraising slumped?

At the start of the 2022 midterm cycle, the RNC had twice as much cash on hand as the Democratic National Committee—$80.5 million versus $38.8 million. Now, the RNC has less than half as much on hand as the DNC—$11.8 million to the DNC’s $25.4 million.

The reversal comes after longtime RNC chair Ronna McDaniel fought off a contentious challenge to her leadership earlier this year, a victory secured partly due to her pledge to prioritize the party’s fundraising efforts.

But the current state of affairs has left many RNC members concerned about the group’s financial status just as the 2024 cycle begins to pick up steam—with some of them pining for the not-so-distant past.

The Trump effect

“They were raising record dollars when Donald Trump was president,” one RNC committeeman said, handing the credit for that accomplishment to Trump, not McDaniel. 

While Trump is still the top Republican cash draw, that doesn’t do the RNC itself as much good as it once did. He’s no longer the incumbent, and with a multitude of Republican primary challengers, the RNC can’t play favorites or hitch its wagon to his star. Beyond that, the Trump campaign has long taken issue with anyone who uses Trump to make a buck—the RNC included.

Flush with cash?

But without the ability to dangle Trump in front of donors, the RNC’s fundraising has slowed dramatically. (At this same point in 2019—a comparable year, before the last general election—the RNC had four times as much in the bank, $46.6 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.) And members have taken note.

“The fundraising has gone in the toilet,” the RNC member said. “They’re not raising money.”

While fundraising might not be abysmal—$50.8 million raised this year, compared to the DNC’s $59.5 million—the bottom line is far from ideal. And those lackluster totals appear to reflect McDaniel’s previous budgetary decisions, which has left the party still nursing a fiscal hangover from a withering 2022 cycle that hit the GOP harder than the Democrats.

“They are way behind,” the previously mentioned RNC member said. “They don’t have money in the bank.” 

Infrastructure week

An RNC spokesperson didn’t dispute that the party was behind the eight-ball, and in fact provided a statement that highlighted the costs of what promises to be an expensive year ahead.

“The RNC is investing in party infrastructure and our data-driven ground game that will bolster the eventual nominee to victory come next Fall,” spokesperson Emma Vaughn said.

“Under Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s leadership, the RNC is on pace to be in a stronger position financially going into 2024, then the last time we were campaigning to take back the White House,” Vaughn continued, referring to Trump’s first stab at the presidency in 2016. She added that much of the “supposed criticism” from RNC sources in this article echoes “the same gossip and innuendo” from McDaniel’s re-election battle in January—a battle that her critics lost handily.

As for the limited cash on hand, one RNC source projected that number would increase to over $20 million by the end of the calendar year.

“The committee is not tracking any debts at the end of 2023,” the source said.

Expense report

RNC committeeman Oscar Brock, a member of the budget committee, told The Daily Beast it was true there was disappointment, but he also touted the RNC’s frugality.

“While we are certainly disappointed and wish fundraising numbers would have been higher, the staffers at the RNC have kept expenses down and managed to stay in the black,” Brock said.

But that’s not quite the case.

Over the midterms, the RNC actually outraised the DNC—by about $30 million, according to FEC data. But it also sprung a much larger hole, spending $401.4 million to the DNC’s $315 million, a difference of more than $85 million, while coming up short in the election.

The RNC’s spending was one of the main fronts in GOP lawyer Harmeet Dhillon’s challenge to McDaniel’s leadership last year, and was heavily litigated in the media, including conservative press. 

The midterms might offer an explanation. The RNC sent $31.7 million in air support to the official Republican political arms for the House and Senate, both of which found themselves strapped for cash as they had to pick up where campaign fundraising faltered. In all, the RNC transferred $72.3 million to various affiliated state parties and national committees in the 2022 cycle. (McDaniel’s detractors in the party had also cited those state transfers as “buying” support from members, an argument that ultimately proved unconvincing.)

That said, in the 2021-2022 midterm cycle, the RNC raised more than $335 million; but after the first seven months of 2023, it has only raised about $50.8 million. Spending has topped $53.3 million, leaving the national party with less than $12 million in the bank as it gears up for a 2024 battle to reclaim the White House and Senate. For an idea of how high that hill might be, the RNC’s total expenses for the 2020 election came out to more than $830 million. And as mentioned earlier in this article, at this point in that election cycle, the RNC had four times as much money in the bank.

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From Roger’s Notebook...

Walker, FEC Ranger. Former GOP Senate hopeful Herschel Walker still—yes, still—has some explaining to do.

Pay Dirt has been covering the Walker campaign’s fallout with the FEC over wide-ranging inconsistencies in its filings, which include ongoing direct conversations with FEC analysts, as disclosed in the campaign’s own letters to the agency. This month, Walker’s treasurer filed two additional such letters, showing that he was still correcting reporting errors across the full scope of the campaign. The letters addressed about 70 separate issues, covering a range of alleged mistakes, including input and software errors, excessive contributions, and donations that went to a fund for a “recount” that never happened. But there were likely more than 70 items—one of the letters was so long that it appeared to exceed the maximum allowable input on the form and got cut off midstream. The campaign has filed eight letters so far this year.

But Walker isn’t exactly keeping his head down. This week, the Daily Caller published a rambling op-ed under his name, saying the United States needs to “make sure the people in charge are clear about the difference between right and wrong” and “must be held accountable.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein quoted a senior GOP official responding to that op-ed: “This is rich. Herschel Walker lecturing on right and wrong? I notice he didn’t mention potential wire fraud, campaign finance violations, unacknowledged abortions or serial adultery. Not to mention hoarding more than 4 million dollars the national party could desperately use to pay down the debt they accumulated to help his campaign!”

Off-brand. A super PAC run by professional associates of indicted Trump insurrection attorney John Eastman has closed its doors, weeks after Fulton County prosecutors brought Eastman up on RICO charges in connection to his alleged role in trying to undermine the 2020 election results. The super PAC—called “Firebrand PAC”—was established in 2021 by Thomas Klingenstein, chair of the right-wing Claremont Institute think tank, which also employed Eastman. The super PAC was created to combat “wokeness,” and several Claremont associates helped run its operations, VICE previously reported.

“We find ourselves in a cold civil war. This is a war not over the size of government or taxes but over the American way of life,” Klingenstein said in Firebrand PAC’s first video, VICE reported. “This war is between those who want to preserve the American way of life, and those who want to destroy it.”

Klingenstein, the Claremont Institute’s top funder, also provided nearly every penny of the super PAC’s $507,000 in receipts, FEC records show. The group didn’t spend a dime trying to influence any elections, passing most of its money on to the New Founding Corporation, another Claremont-tied anti-woke entity that also drifted into troubled financial waters this year.

Viva Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported this week that Democratic state assemblywoman Michelle Gorelow voted to allocate $250,000 in taxpayer-backed funds to a recently created organization shortly before the group—Arc of Nevada—hired her as executive director. She is one of two employees, and the appropriation was the first the group had received from the state, the Review-Journal reported.

Small potatoes. The campaign committee for Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) has settled with the FEC for failing to timely refund $58,000 in excessive contributions to his 2020 campaign, according to a recently released agreement signed earlier this month. The settlement came after the agency completed an audit of Risch’s campaign earlier this year, and the terms stipulate a $4,325 fine for the violation.

Back burner. After Pay Dirt reported last week that Republican FEC commissioner Allen Dickerson had proposed significant changes to the agency’s investigation protocol, the agency tabled those discussions. Dickerson’s proposals would, among other things, give commissioners new oversight of the Office of General Counsel’s investigatory decisions, including subpoena approval.

The decision also comes after Rep. Joe Morelle, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, blasted the plan in a letter to the commissioners, saying the moves would “impose needless and superfluous work” on the FEC’s already overworked lawyers.

The proposal had been slated for discussion during the FEC’s open meeting this Wednesday, but according to the minutes, the item was “held over to a future meeting.”

More From The Beast’s Politics Desk

An Arizona Democratic congressional candidate who as a former Republican described the state’s 2022 GOP ticket as “election-denying lunatics” is cashing large campaign checks from a Republican lawyer who represented election-denying lunatics—including former state GOP chair Kelli Ward’s efforts to overturn the 2020 results. Read Sam Brodey’s head-spinning scoop here.

Mark Meadows is already pitching a legal defense in Georgia that puts him directly at odds with Donald Trump, resting on the idea that he was just doing his job, and his efforts to help to overturn the election were at the direction of the former president himself. Jose Pagliery reports that this is exactly what Fulton County DA Fani Willis is trying to prove: Trump was the head of the entire alleged conspiracy.

CPAC chair Matt Schlapp previously offered to settle the multimillion-dollar sexual battery and defamation suit against him, but was rejected. He also faces new accusations from two other young men, developments that put more pressure on his defenders within the conservative organization—a group that itself saw high-level departures in recent months. You can read my latest exclusive on those developments here.

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