WinRed Numbers Follow Roll Call Report That Republican Donors Believe The House Isn’t Within Striking Distance
One day after Roll Call reported that Republican donors are giving up on retaking the House, WinRed’s FEC filing shows that Republicans’ much-heralded answer to ActBlue isn’t doing much for House Republicans.
Politico reports that two-thirds of the platform’s donations flowed to the Trump campaign or the RNC. And ONLY TWO House Republicans not in leadership raised more than $200,000 during the platform’s entire first six months.
House Republicans’ rough time with WinRed came despite the fact that multiple Republican senators raised more than a million dollars on the platform.
It looks like the 27 retiring House Republicans aren’t the only ones not buying Emmer’s schtick about winning back the House next year.
Trump, RNC accounted for two-thirds of WinRed fundraising
Scott Bland
President Donald Trump and the RNC accounted for more than two-thirds of the money processed by the GOP’s new online donation platform in the last six months of 2019, according to a new filing with the FEC.
The filing from WinRed shows that over $101 million flowed through the committee to Republican candidates and causes in the second half of 2019, a fast start for the platform, which has been touted by GOP leaders as part of the solution to the party’s online fundraising gap. Democratic campaigns using ActBlue swamped Republican campaigns with cash during the 2018 midterms.
But WinRed’s first six months were also top-heavy, the filing shows, driven largely by Trump’s 2020 campaign apparatus, which has achieved far better online fundraising results than the rest of the GOP. Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising committee between the president and the RNC, received $36 million in online money through WinRed, with an average contribution of $40. Trump’s campaign directly raised $19.2 million through the platform, while the RNC brought in $13.4 million.
Six other groups cleared $1 million online through WinRed over the same timeframe: the NRCC ($5.4 million), the NRSC ($4.3 million) and the campaigns of Sen. Mitch McConnell ($2.3 million), New York Rep. Elise Stefanik ($2.1 million), Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner ($1.1 million) and Texas Sen. John Cornyn ($1.1 million).
(See all Republican groups’ July-December 2019 WinRed fundraising here.)
Another 14 Republican members, congressional candidates and committees raised at least $200,000 between July 1 and Dec. 31 of last year. They include seven senators led by Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, as well as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise.
GOP donors also routed about $194,000 via WinRed into an escrow fund that will go to the party’s eventual nominee in Michigan’s battleground 8th Congressional District — a strategy that House Democrats used to great effect in 2018, when similar escrow funds pumped millions of dollars into dozens of battleground district campaigns after the primaries were over.
ActBlue’s semi-yearly filing detailing Democratic online fundraising in the second half of 2019 is not yet available. The filing deadline is Friday night.