Last month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee prepared a slideshow for Senate chiefs of staff full of bleak numbers about the party's failure to compete with Democrats on digital fundraising. For anyone not getting the message, the final slide hammered home the possible end result: a freight train bearing down on a man standing on the tracks.
The slideshow, obtained by POLITICO, painted a grim picture of the GOP’s long-running problem. Republican senators and challengers lagged behind Democrats by a collective $30 million in the first quarter of 2020, a deficit stemming from Democrats’ superior online fundraising machine. Since then, Democrats' fundraising pace accelerated further, with the party’s challengers announcing huge second-quarter hauls last week, largely driven by online donors giving through ActBlue, the party’s preferred fundraising platform.
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The money guarantees Democrats nothing heading into November 2020. But with President Donald Trump’s poll numbers sagging and more GOP-held Senate races looking competitive, the intensity of Democrats’ online fundraising is close to erasing the financial advantage incumbent senators usually enjoy. That’s making it harder to bend their campaigns away from the national trend lines — and helping Democrats’ odds of flipping the Senate.
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Republicans have a new online donation tool backed by Trump, WinRed, which they have hailed as an answer to their ActBlue problem. But a dozen Republican Party strategists and donors warned in interviews that not enough GOP campaigns are taking active steps to properly use the tools at their disposal to haul in money.
During the lunch meeting with senators’ top aides, NRSC staffers warned that if Republicans don’t improve — by investing in list-building, advertising regularly on Facebook and increasing email solicitations — the outlook was bleak not just for 2020, but for 2022 and 2024.
“It’s a slow-moving trainwreck,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican consultant who led Marco Rubio’s digital strategy in the 2016 presidential campaign. “The warning signs are flashing right now, and they’re ignoring it.”
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Democratic Senate campaigns have outraised Republicans in small-dollar donations (under $200) in 10 of the 12 most potentially competitive races, according to a review of the most recent Federal Election Commission reports, which this week are due for an update covering the second quarter. Already, many Democratic campaigns have announced that they raised massive sums in the last three months, while few Republicans have tipped their hands. Unitemized donations also represented a higher percentage of individual receipts for Democrats in every competitive race featuring a GOP senator.
“Some GOP Senate candidates have made great strides online, but we’re still light-years away from where we need to be as a party,” Kevin McLaughlin, executive director of the NRSC, said in a statement. “2020 should serve as a canary in the coal mine to anyone on the ballot in 2022 and beyond. They have a simple choice: Adapt immediately or find a new job. We have better resources than Democrats, but they don’t do any good if no one uses them.”
A perennial problem
Over the last decade, Republicans have lagged behind Democrats in online fundraising. But the 2018 election clarified the problem like never before, when Democratic challengers swamped their opponents in online cash and flipped the House. Now, the same pattern is materializing again in 2020, in both the House and the Senate.
The NRSC, which has worked over the past several election cycles to build its own successful small-dollar program, is evangelizing about the importance of growing GOP online fundraising. Sen. Todd Young, the committee chairman, briefed senators during a party lunch about online fundraising the week after the meeting with chiefs of staff. And on July 1, the NRSC also assembled chiefs of staff for senators on the ballot in 2022 to emphasize the importance of starting early, according to people familiar with the meetings.
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Some Republican party committees have caught up to or even surpassed their Democratic counterparts in grassroots fundraising. But the same can’t be said about candidates.
The numbers are also troubling for the House GOP. Vulnerable House Democrats raised a staggering $35 million in the second quarter and ended with a collective $117 million in their campaign accounts, building a layer of financial protection on top of the favorable polling currently shielding their majority.
“[Democrats] are better at online fundraising than we are — period,” said Corry Bliss, who as executive director of Congressional Leadership Fund, the GOP’s main House super PAC, warned of a Democratic “green wave” in 2018. Now, he said, it’s “back.”
“Thanks to WinRed and most campaigns understanding how important this is to winning, we have improved from last cycle,” Bliss said. But, he added, “You’re not going to change it overnight.”
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There are bright spots for Republicans. Michigan challenger John James has been one of the party’s best online fundraisers and has outraised Democratic Sen. Gary Peters several quarters in a row. Sen. Martha McSally has consistently led her colleagues in small dollar donations, making her one of the party’s best fundraisers running this cycle alongside Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who also raises big money online. But they’re running against Mark Kelly and Amy McGrath, respectively, who have both shattered fundraising records with even bigger online programs.
Trump is one of the best small-dollar fundraisers in history, shepherding donors to down-ballot Republicans’ WinRed pages when he tweets out endorsements. He’s spent more than $50 million on Facebook ads alone since May 2018, strengthening his small-dollar network and building a bigger online donor base for the whole GOP, as he entices some of the party’s voters to embrace digital giving.
Still, “there’s a giant fear that when Trump leaves the stage, Republicans are going to be logarithmically behind in terms of small-dollar donors,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor. “The traditional model is slowly dying.”
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